The five best deaths from AMC’s The Walking Dead

Merle

One thing I’ve always loved about The Walking Dead is its realism, or as much as you can expect from a show about a zombie apocalypse.

You rarely have characters that are over-the-top or caricatures. Most often, a character’s actions have motivations that, while not always rational, are ones you can understand, making the characters very realistic, where other shows would have potentially made them cartoonish.

This is what makes Merle’s death so great: In a show where such a thing is unlikely to happen, Merle had a true “Hero’s Death”, and, it all made perfect sense both within the context of the show, and with Merle’s character.

Merle, who was one of the closest things (Maybe even the closest thing) to a true hostile in the first season of The Walking Dead, was an erratic, belligerent, violent racist, who was going around beating up T-Dog and Morales while wasting bullets sniping zombies from the roof of the department store the group was holed up in when Rick first met them, which also ensured the store was getting increasingly surrounded. He was, at the time, the last person you would have ever expected being a hero to any degree in the show.

But, then…a funny thing happened.

In season 3, we were reintroduced to Merle, now with a knife for a hand, and working as a henchman for The Governor. Not exactly “hero” material. Yet, this time, Merle was clean. This caused a fairly drastic change in Merle: The erratic violence was gone, he was still violent, but, he wasn’t flying off the handle and just attacking anybody like he was in season 1, even his racism seemed subdued, as he seemed to have no problem coexisting with Martinez, Shumpert, and even Michonne. In short, this was a different Merle.

Yes, he served as the henchman of The Governor, but, his loyalty was always to one person: Daryl. Even before Andrea confirmed to him that Daryl survived Atlanta, Merle was searching for him, and as soon as he found him, he sought to reunite with him.

And, that fraternal bond would change everything for Merle. It sparked the war between the prison and Woodbury, it forced Merle to truly become a member of Rick’s group, to throw his lot in with them come Hell or high water, which, in turn, made Merle confront himself — To question the kind of man he had been, the kind of man he was at that moment, and the kind of man he wanted to be.

Which leads me…to his death.

As it seemed that war was imminent, The Governor proposed to Rick a deal: That, if he gave Michonne up, The Governor would leave the group alone. Rick, not feeling comfortable handing Michonne over to face a certainly cruel death, hesitated. Merle, meanwhile, fearing that this was the only course that might guarantee Daryl’s safety, took it upon himself to tie up Michonne and bring her to The Governor to make the deal himself.

However, the further along he and Michonne went, the more Michonne tried to reason with Merle, and the more Merle began to have that aforementioned confrontation with himself, before finally acknowledging what they both already knew: Whether the group gave up Michonne or not, The Governor would slaughter them all.

Recognizing what lay ahead, Merle sent Michonne back to the prison, telling her to get the group ready for The Governor’s assault, while he arrived at the place where Michonne was supposed to be handed over, leading a parade of walkers as backup so that he could ambush The Governor’s ambush. Merle bravely took out over half a dozen of The Governor’s troops, fighting a one-man guerilla war, sabotaging his enemy’s scheme. Sadly, his luck ran out, and he was ganged up on by the rest of the henchmen, before being gunned down by The Governor, his last words being ones of defiance, refusing to beg for his life.

What makes Merle’s death so great is that his character had done a complete 180: Starting as, essentially, a villain, but, dying a hero, and, in a show where such things would seem unrealistic, they not only pulled it off, but completed a redemption arc for Merle at the same time.

Brilliant.