It feels like just yesterday that The Walking Dead: Dead City season 3 was premiering, and we were all sitting down on our couches to watch arguably the best season of the show so far. And while the finale was decent, there was one thing that bothered me, a key character death and the aftermath of that death.
While deaths in The Walking Dead spinoffs aren’t rare, this one really didn’t sit well with me.
So for those who don’t want to be spoiled, watch out, as there are plenty of spoilers below.
Renata’s death felt anticlimactic
As someone who has never really struggled to connect with new characters (because I care about them so much), I ended up loving Renata (Aimee Garcia) this season. Of all the new characters introduced, Renata was the one I really loved watching.
But unfortunately, she was killed off in the seventh episode — or at least we didn’t really know until episode 8.
In episode 7, “Hourglass,” Dillard (Jimmi Simpson) completely loses his mind and takes over the whole group that was sent to capture Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) from the bar. When Renata decides to back down and talk with him, Dillard pulls a gun on her and shoots her square in the chest.
We see her go down, and in the episode, people don't really talk about it that much. It doesn't become a huge deal. You might think the characters will bring it up more later. It's kind of brushed aside. It isn’t until the last episode that we see her final fate. In “Tenebrae,” she became a walker and was strapped to a table.
It’s not like it was a graphic death like many deaths in The Walking Dead. She was shot and killed. It happens all the time in this universe, but I think it was how it was handled that bothered me so much.
Renata was a really important character this season, up there with both Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan. And while I love Negan and Maggie is my girl, Renata was certainly climbing the ranks up there as one of my favorites for this show. She had her head on her shoulders and clearly wanted the best for her people. She and her brother, Luis (Raul Castillo), had somehow survived this long and were good people. She was starting to make way with the civilians, and I felt that, if given time, she and Negan could have reached an agreement.
Then, she was shot and taken out, and we barely got a reaction from everyone else, just Maggie and Negan shooting outside the windows of the bar. Seeing her walker in episode 8 felt like a slap in the face to the character.
The biggest issue with all this is that Luis and Maggie are the ones to discover Renata, and he’s the one to put her down. But there’s literally no emotion behind it. These two have survived for nearly two decades in this world, and now he sees her as a walker, and there’s barely a reaction. Huh? Where's the love? The sadness? The grief?
This continues the side-character death trend
This further proves that these shows really don’t know what to do with these side characters. The season 3 finale as an episode itself was fine. I enjoyed it, and I think there were plenty of great moments. You can’t really have a real show if you’re still focusing on the core two characters without expanding on the ones they love and building that community.
That’s what made The Walking Dead so good: the core ensemble cast. If these spinoffs keep killing characters that mean something so fast, no one will be left. We can only see Maggie and Negan face conflicts for so long.
At the very least, I’m happy that Luis made it to the end. Maybe he and Maggie could have that romance that was teased earlier in the season. Without season 4 confirmed yet, who knows where we’re going? All I know is that these side characters had better last longer, because I’m losing steam here.
You can watch all three seasons of The Walking Dead: Dead City on AMC+. The first two are available to stream on Netflix.
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