The death of Captain Howard in Bad Boys for Life was a shocking loss of one of the franchise’s key characters. Joe Pantoliano first played the character in 1995’s Bad Boys and stayed in the role for the first three movies alongside stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. While the trailer for the fourth movie, 2024’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die, showed that Howard would appear again, it was in a much different capacity as the character was killed off in the third movie.
https://screenrant.com/bad-boys-3-captain-howard-death-mike-armando-explained/