The Worst Deaths In The Walking Dead

Beth

Grrr.

There is lot to like about Beth’s death in The Walking Dead, from a narrative standpoint.

Firstly, it definitely was dramatic. The reaction of Dawn and Rick’s group at seeing Beth die was brilliant. All of them, Dawn included, were horrified seeing what happened to her and nobody, not even the fans, saw it coming — A young girl, who’d finally gotten some much-needed depth over the last season and half, just cut down by making one bad mistake…it was heartbreaking.

Secondly, unlike Noah’s death, Beth’s had impact. Daryl, Rick, Tyreese, and especially Maggie were all deeply scarred by the loss of Beth. Daryl began to punish himself after her death, burning himself with cigarettes, and seemingly blaming himself for what happened.

Rick, already Mayor of Crazytown by this point, became worse. After losing Lori, Hershel, the prison, Bob, and now Beth, Rick seemed even more at the end of his rope, and even more prone to distrust and violence.

Tyreese was so distraught, he was having hallucinations of seeing her (Along with Lizzie, Mika, and Bob) talking to him after he was bitten inside of Noah’s house, trying to comfort him about the decisions he’d made, the actions he’d taken, and death.

Finally, Maggie, became increasingly hardened and cynical, rejecting Gabriel’s attempts to console her, only seeming to return to something approaching normal after realizing that Gabriel was trying to get himself killed as atonement for his sins, and stopping Sasha from murdering him, but still, she was not quite the same Maggie that escaped the fall of the prison.

And, most importantly, it got, for the most part, the sort of response a good character death should get: Fans were sad that she was gone, and angry thinking about all the potential her character would never get to fulfill. Honestly, for a little while, it seemed like the rage from the “Bethyl” shippers would overshadow the narrative value of her death, but, that wasn’t enough to make this “bad”, per se.

The problem, then? Well, remember that “one bad mistake” I mentioned earlier? Yeah…well, that mistake was Beth deciding to stab Officer Dawn Lerner in the shoulder with a pair of scissors…while Dawn was pointing a gun at her.

WHAT?!?

WHY?!?

Now, Beth wasn’t a natural survivor in the same sense that Daryl is, but, she was by no means a stupid person, and yet, she did what is easily one of the stupidest things any protagonist in The Walking Dead has ever done.

It made no sense. Yeah, she was pissed at Dawn. Okay, why not slap her, or, better yet, why not wait for her to PUT HER GUN AWAY?!?

Honestly…it made her look like a moron. There had to be a better way to have Beth get killed off. Maybe, Noah refuses to go back to Dawn, and, as the group leaves, Dawn follows them and shoots Beth, I don’t know, but, almost anything would have been better than what we got.

A character’s death is, ideally, supposed to invoke anger, but, when that anger comes from how stupid the character was made to look, that’s a problem.