The top 5 Walking Dead deaths of 2020
By Liam O'Leary
There’s always lots of death in The Walking Dead universe. What was 2020’s BEST?
In a show set in the midst of…or the beginning of…or a decade after a zombie apocalypse, like the three existing Walking Dead shows, death becomes a very normal way of writing characters off of the show. It’s also an extremely logical way of doing it, as simply having every character just leave would make no sense, and, frankly, be kind of…lame.
As such, we’re seeing deaths in The Walking Dead universe all the time. The thing is, though: They’re kind of hit or miss. Some deaths are really good, while others are downright awful.
About a year ago, I sat down, went back over all the deaths up to that point in The Walking Dead, and tried to figure out which were the worst, and which were the best, and this year, I’ve decided to do the same thing again, only with the best and worst deaths across the three series this year.
Now, you might be wondering what makes a death a “good” death (The very notion of a “good” death sounds weird, out of context). Well, for our purposes, I’ll use the same criteria as I did last year:
1) It needs good timing. When a character has, apparently, run out of good storyline material, or hasn’t been used in dog’s years, or the writers want them to go out while leaving the audience wanting more, then it’s probably a good time to axe them.
2) It needs to be dramatic. If it would be really heart-wrenching for the surviving characters to lose the decedent at a specific moment, and help motivate them into new directions, then, it’s probably good to have that character bite the bullet.
And 3) It has to hit the right buttons with the audience. If this particular character’s death makes the audience want more of them, hate whoever killed them, and yet, still want to know what happens next to those left behind, then, you got them right where you want them.
There’s other factors I may address, but, these are the big ones. If you’re missing these, then, the death will go down in the annals of TV history as a wasted opportunity, or something the majority of fans will grumble about forever after.
Luckily, I think these next five hit things just right…