I partly blame Tarantino for that - he was the one egging Rodriguez on to finish the trilogy with a 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'-style epic, but there's a reason that's a three hour film! Trying to cover that kind of scope in two was always going to result in an interesting failure.

Poor Fideo - his role in a great many fanfics does seem to be to die and cause Angst! Though Lorenzo takes that role too, often enough. But then Rodriguez did rather start the trend in killing off El's sidekicks, I suppose XD