The top 5 Walking Dead deaths of 2020

5) Alpha

I think some of the most important deaths in any Walking Dead show are those of its villains. If the villains go out like chumps, it sort of undermines the threat they had posed to the protagonists up to that point: If they could be done in this easily, why didn’t the good guys just do that earlier?

Conversely, if the villain’s death is good, then, it justifies their having been such a threatening force for however long they were in the show.

This also plays into the whole “fitting” idea I just spoke of with Emile. If the villain’s death doesn’t fit the character, it renders everything moot. Think back to how Bane was killed in The Dark Knight Rises: As Batman has finally gotten his body in the sort of shape he needed to fight Bane, and finally matching him physically, Catwoman just shows up…and shoots him. The end. It made Bane look like a loser. Bane. One of Batman’s greatest villains, ended up looking no better than some mid-level boss in an arcade beat’em up game. You can’t do that to your villains.

The reason I’m saying this is because, in spite of how low-energy Alpha’s death was, I actually think it suited her perfectly.

Alpha’s best strength as a villain had been her intelligence. She wasn’t just sending a massive army to kill the communities (In fact, there was a nice little scene earlier in the season where one of the other Whisperers criticized her for not doing that), instead, she had a spy sabotaging them from within, she had Gamma slowly contaminating the communities’ water supplies, she had Beta infiltrate Alexandria through a secret tunnel and “Michael Myers” his way through the community, and she fought a slow war of attrition, sending waves of walkers at the communities for days on end, slowly wearing them down and tiring them out, while still holding the bulk of her walkers in reserve; Hell, she even infiltrated The Kingdom herself to oversee the kidnapping of all the people she would have decapitated to serve as the marker between Whisperer turf and the communities. It was all about strategy, utilizing the communities’ weaknesses, and, generally, being two moves ahead.

So, when you look back at Alpha from that angle, it makes sense that she wouldn’t die in some fiery, climactic battle with the communities, but instead, by being outsmarted and outmaneuvered by Carol, and killed by Negan after he infiltrated the Whisperers. In my opinion, it all just fit.

Alpha’s death also helped highlight her warped perception of things. When Alpha was killed, it was because Negan tricked her into thinking he had captured Lydia and had brought her to were her daughter was being held, so that she could kill Lydia and ensure that she was always with her. It was a strange window into how Alpha perceived her relationship with her daughter and weird peak into her psyche, just before Negan put an end to her.

In spite of how violent and destructive of a villain Alpha was, she didn’t need a death to match that aspect of her character, as it would turn out that having her death be one that matched the more cerebral side of her character was more satisfying than, I think, any gratuitously violent death could be.

There’s always going to be death in the Walking Dead universe (With the word “Dead” in the title, what would you expect?), but, if you’re expecting all of those deaths to be good, you’re going to be sadly mistaken. This is why I always think it important to highlight the deaths across the Walking Dead series that do what death in a TV show is supposed to do, and I believe that these five, are the best deaths the three shows gave us, in all of 2020.

But, what do you guys think? Do you agree? Would you switch out another character for one of the ones I presented here, or would you replace all of them? I’m curious to hear what you have to say. And, if you enjoyed this and want to learn how to have the “best” death of all in a zombie apocalypse (By not having one), then why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!