The Walking Dead: Deaths that SHOULDN’T have happened

2) Jesus

I’ll be fair to this one: Visually and in terms of impact, this death was great. Jesus, a pretty prominent character by this point, leader of Hilltop, and one of the more recognizable characters in the show was killed by a Whisperer inside of a foggy graveyard. It looked like a classic horror movie out of the 50s and was meant to make a statement about the Whisperers as a threat. So, to those ends, it was pretty effective.

The question is: Should this death have happened?

I don’t think so.

The reason I say this is because the show had lost so many prominent characters in a rather short period of time leading up to Jesus’s demise. Maggie had left, Rick had disappeared (And was presumed dead), and another major character had died (Which we’ll get into later), all within the span of less than one season, with two of them within less than half a season.

I get the need to present the Whisperers as a legitimate threat, and I get the need to shock the audience now and again, and I get the necessity to make it seem like no one is safe. These are all perfectly legitimate things that the writers of a TV show need to keep in mind when choosing a character to write off, but other characters could have been killed off in his place. They could have slotted Tara in Jesus’s place and likely get a similar impact. She was a likable character, had been with the group since season four, and was, frankly, kind of adrift since the war with the Whisperers, so why not?

Especially considering that she would end up being killed off by the end of this same season anyway, it’s not like they needed to save her for some big character development moment.

Now, I know that Tom Payne was probably getting ready for Prodigal Son, and is likely why Jesus got killed off, but just from a Walking Dead perspective, the timing of his death just was not good. With so many prominent characters leaving so quickly (And at least two more leaving by the end of the next season), the series needed another major departure like it needed a proverbial hole in the head.

What would they have done with Jesus had he survived? I’m not sure, but we had never really seen him really leading Hilltop. So, seeing him really become the leader Hilltop needed, particularly as they were beginning to go to war with the Whisperers, seems like a good place to start.

Maybe, if he survived, the last two deaths I’ll cover wouldn’t have felt so bad.