In a show like The Walking Dead, so many villains have come and gone, and some honestly overstayed their welcome. Heck, one villain became so big he turned into a main character on the show—that's right, I’m talking about Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan.
He still does even now, in Dead City, one of the few Walking Dead spinoffs. However, with eleven seasons, there are some villains I honestly wish we'd seen way more of. Here are four that should have stuck around.
Terminus (Gareth)
The first one I wish we'd seen more of was Gareth (Andrew J. West), mainly because Terminus was… really short.
It was built up for the entire first half of season 4, and when they finally arrived, Carol (Melissa McBride) essentially took it out in the first episode of season 5. Granted, it was one of the best episodes of the whole season, but it makes me wonder how season 5 might have played out if Gareth and a few survivors from Terminus had lived longer than a few episodes.
I mean, think about it. One of the biggest criticisms of season 5 is that it felt like nothing was happening for most of it. The big thing that we were following after Gareth was Beth (Emily Kinney) and trying to get her back from the hospital, which only ended in pain because she died anyway. I will never forgive The Walking Dead for that.
Then, afterward, they were just… walking for a good amount of time before they got to Alexandria, and that’s not for several episodes in. Could you imagine how interesting it would have been if Gareth and his crew suddenly appeared in the background and messed everything up? Maybe added in a few cannibal attempts here and there to eat some of the crew? That could have been at least better than what we got.
Shane Walsh
While Shane actually dies pretty early on in the comics, even earlier than season 2, Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) in the show, it should have lasted way longer. I personally think this is because Bernthal gave such a compelling performance as Shane that he was honestly one of the best actors in the earlier seasons. Watching him die the way he did was such a shame because I really loved the dynamic he created.
However, I would have loved to see him in season 3 with dictator Rick (Andrew Lincoln). Oh, the messy fights that would have caused, the betrayals—heck, Shane might have ended up working with the Governor (David Morrissey) somehow, and that would have caused so much pain. I would have eaten that up.
Bernthal has gone on to do incredible things—like breaking box office records this past summer—but I’ll always remember him as Shane.
Merle Dixon
Michael Rooker deserved so much better with Merle, because what do you mean you brought him back for like a few episodes in season 3, only to kill him off?
If anything, Merle deserved to have some sort of redemption arc like Daryl. Was he a racist, misogynistic, horrible man? Heck yes, he was. He was from the Deep South. You’ll experience plenty of that if you go far enough in the United States. Even Daryl (Norman Reedus) was a little bit like that at the beginning.
But heck, if Negan can get a freaking redemption arc throughout the course of the franchise, I think Merle could have too. He could have at least been a villain for a little longer and then slowly worked his way up to a decent human status. I guess his sacrifice at the end makes up for it, but I always think he could have lasted a little longer than the show let him.
The Wolves
This is another major thing—I really wanted the Wolves to be a bigger issue in season 6. I always consider season 6 of The Walking Dead the bottleneck season: it feels like big things are about to happen, but we’re still stuck in this moment, so we had to fit in some villains to keep the pace going.
The Wolves were a group of sadistic survivors who would kill any human on sight, often with a ‘W’ carved into their head. At one point in season 6, they broke into Alexandria but were taken out pretty quickly. And this bothers me greatly.
Carol, of course, goes full beast mode and kills a lot of them. That season 4 change for her altered her in ways I can’t even describe. But it’s also aggravating because these people, at this point, had survived in the apocalypse for years because of their ways, and they’re all taken out just like that? There’s no backup base somewhere or another leader lying in wait? I really wanted them to last a few more episodes, at least until the walker horde. It always just feels like the moment Rick’s crew arrives, every enemy dies instantly.
You can watch all 11 seasons of The Walking Dead on Netflix.
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