The Worst Deaths In The Walking Dead

Glenn

Grrrr.

As I’m typing this, I can already feel myself getting annoyed.

Okay, before I go into a rant about everything wrong with Glenn’s death, let’s go over what was right about it.

Firstly, it happened at the perfect time. Now, I know there’s many that never wanted Glenn to die, and, while I certainly understand the sentiment (As you’ll see with my final entry), I feel like, if you absolutely had to kill Glenn, doing so at the same point where he died in the comics, at the hands of one of the series’ biggest villains, is certainly the way to do it.

Secondly, while I know there were a lot of people bothered by the graphic nature of Glenn’s death, let me say two things about that:

1) If you so much as looked up his name or Negan’s on an image search, chances are, you would have seen what happened to Glenn in the comic (Hell, that’s how I found out about Glenn’s fate before arriving at that point in the comics), so, it’s not like you couldn’t know what was coming.

2) The Walking Dead is a show set in a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. If you’ve been watching it for any length of time, you would have seen an old man get his guts torn into, another old man get decapitated, one teenager get torn apart by zombies, and another get her brains blown out, and that’s just the deaths I’ve covered thus far between this and the “Best Deaths” list!! If you can stomach those, plus all the other brutal deaths (Like “Glasses Guy, who got his eye torn out by a walker!), then I highly doubt Glenn’s was somehow beyond the pale, and, if it was too much for your children…WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING LETTING KIDS WATCH THE SHOW IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?

…Anyhow…

The real reason why Glenn’s death was bad? The fake-outs.

In the third episode of Season Six, “Thank You”, near the episode’s conclusion, Nicholas commits suicide rather than be eaten alive by walkers, however, the sound of the gunshot, and Glenn’s attempt to catch Nicholas causes him to fall into the herd of walkers along with his now deceased compatriot. The last shot we see of Glenn is him screaming as what appear to be his guts are ripped out right in front of him.

However, that was not the case. It turned out (Four episodes later!) that it was not Glenn’s guts we saw getting ripped out, but Nicholas’. Glenn, it turned out, had scurried under the dumpster he and Nicholas had been standing on and managed to survive, waiting for the walkers to disperse.

Now, that fake-out, in isolation, wasn’t bad. It was a close call of a beloved character, and it made fans breath a sigh of relief when he was revealed to be alright.

But, then, we had the second one.

When Negan was introduced, we saw as he lined up all the principal characters of the show (Except Carol) and “Eeny Meeny Miny Moe”d to pick which among them was going to die. Many familiar with this point in the comics suspected Glenn was chosen. Of course, we couldn’t tell because, as Negan made his selection, the camera now shifted to the perspective of whomever it was he chose. This meant fans had to wait six months to find out who Negan killed (Abraham), and then, to find out that, he also killed Glenn, quite brutally.

Again, individually, the components here — The fake-out, the cliffhanger, Glenn and Abraham’s death — were fine, and, had there been more time between them or had Glenn not died at that point, it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but…there wasn’t, and Glenn did, so, yeah, it was a big deal.

In fact, the very night I’m writing this, I’m still seeing the odd person saying that they stopped watching The Walking Dead when Glenn died, and, saying “the odd person”, frankly, understates just how much people hated this.

What makes Glenn’s death so bad is that the controversy that erupted from it completely overshadowed the narrative. Sure, those who were still watching were seeing the impact on the characters, but, there weren’t as many people watching anymore, and, it would begin a serious decline for the show’s ratings. The whole situation became more about people swearing off the show, and being angry at the writers than it was about what was going to happen next in the show and being angry at Negan.

Need I say more?