The Walking Dead: Fans experience 5 stages of grief all summer
By Susie Graham
Fans of The Walking Dead experience the stages of grief in many ways related to the zombie show every season and during every break. This summer, the cliffhanger has exacerbated this phenomenon.
It seems like once you’ve identified something, you would be able to avoid it. But with the stages of grief, that’s not the case. We go through the stages in some way at different times in our own ways when we experience loss.
We don’t stay in each stage for a predetermined amount of time or go through the stages chronologically, necessarily. We flip-flop back and forth and move through some stages more quickly than others. We can even relapse and go back to earlier stages we think we’ve passed.
Walker withdrawals and disappointment about a television show is not death, although we experience fictional death on the show and our characters go through grief over deaths on the show quite often, but it is a loss.
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It’s a loss of something we love and enjoy each Sunday. A loss of something that hardcore fans have a very strong bond with and are attached to in meaningful ways.
The cliffhanger this season has magnified the stages of grief for many fans this summer, even if they are not aware of it.
Denial: This was expressed in the current vernacular as WTF!? right at the moment it happened. The yelling of no way are you doing this to us.
Anger: Denial moved swiftly into anger. Almost immediately for some. People were mad! They Tweeted and commented everywhere about their anger. And they took it out on Scott Gimple!
Bargaining: This is the funniest one for The Walking Dead. In death, bargaining is more difficult to recognize. With The Walking Dead it jumps out at you. The bargainers don’t see it as easily as those around them though. Bargains sound like this:
- I’ll give them one more chance, but they better not do this again.
- I’ll watch to see who got killed, but then, I’m done.
- They’re going to lose all their fans over this.
- If it’s not a big character now, I’m really going to be mad.
- I hope it gets spoiled, that’ll show them.
- I bet it’s Abraham (insert character here) because…. (any theory).
Depression: This is the more difficult one to recognize. Life does go on, but we see depression in its mildest form when we hear things like:
- Is it October yet?
- I miss my Walking Dead!
- I can’t wait until The Walking Dead comes back!
Acceptance: This is mostly theoretical and happens when we’re caught off guard or engrossed in another activity.
The trouble comes when fans are at different stages at different times. When your friends are in denial and you’re angry. One friend is still making theories and another is depressed. But we get through it together. We are The Walking Dead Family.
Something I’ve learned in my life is that anger is an expression of hurt. The anger comes to protect us from the hurt that’s bubbling up underneath. And we hurt because we love The Walking Dead and we love our fictional family and the actors and people behind the scenes of our show.