Character deaths can either make or break a series. When it comes to The Walking Dead, there’s no doubt that the quality of the storytelling went downhill after Glenn’s death. However, it wasn’t necessarily the death itself that caused a problem.
You see, by this point, The Walking Dead had been running for six seasons, and this is traditionally when storytelling starts to struggle in a long-running series. It was like the writers were lost on what to do with some of the characters without Glenn around.
At the same time, Glenn’s death changed The Walking Dead for the better, especially when you look at it from a survival point of view. It reminded us that the monsters weren’t necessarily the biggest villains of the story.
Glenn’s death deepened the villain’s impact in The Walking Dead
One of the biggest benefits of killing off Glenn was the reminder that humans are worse than monsters. In a game of survival, it’s the strongest that will survive. Weaker people end up safe because they form alliances with the stronger members of society, and they often offer other benefits. Glenn was great at sneaking in and figuring out escape plans, for example.
However, there is always a risk of finding more dangerous survivors out there, and we found that in The Walking Dead season 6. Negan’s crew was one of the most ruthless and brutal groups that Rick’s group had come across, but we needed to feel that in a visceral and heartbreaking way. The only way to do that was to kill off a beloved member of the cast.
Glenn it was. This death deepened the impact of the villain, because we knew that Glenn was no threat to Negan and his group of survivors. Even Negan would have figured that out. To kill off a weaker member of the team shows an element of fear in the murderer. They can’t kill off a stronger player, because they probably wouldn’t win in the fight.
An escalation of brutality in the apocalypse
From the start, we knew that there was brutality in the survival landscape. The Walking Dead isn’t the first show to bring us fast-running zombies, and each time, we’ve felt the threat that they bring. However, they don’t quite show the brutality of an apocalypse.
Zombies kill to feed. They’re like animals in that sense, running on their own survival needs. When it comes to the brutality of humans, there’s another layer to it. Humans have a conscience, and they have choices that they can make. Negan purposely chose death and violence to prove that he was the bigger player in the game.
Up to this point, the brutality against Rick’s group had mostly come from the zombies or just individuals looking to survive in some sort of way. Negan’s brutality stepped things up, as he found a sport in it all. This escalation made it clear to us that nobody was safe in The Walking Dead, and that meant every scene we worried about other members of the cast.
The only way we could feel the fear that the others were feeling was by killing off someone important. It had to be a character who was with us from the beginning, and with Glenn arguably being one of the weaker members of the group, it made sense for it to be him. Plus, his death would be felt by numerous other cast members, leading to grief that changed The Walking Dead forever.
While yes, Glenn’s death was a turning point that led to many people turning away from The Walking Dead, it wasn’t specifically the death that led to writing issues. In fact, Glenn’s death made the feeling of survival and fear all the more prominent, as it was clear that nobody was safe.
The Walking Dead is available to stream on AMC+.