The Walking Dead has killed off more than a few beloved characters over the years. Honestly, the show was a bit like a reality TV talent show: You should never get attached to any character/contestant in the show as they might get eliminated at any moment. And The Walking Dead eliminated plenty over the years.
We get it: It's a zombie show and there are rarely zombie shows (or movies, for that matter) without some casualties along the way. Across its seven shows thus far, the TWD Universe has wracked up a heck of a body count, and with multiple spinoffs still on the air long after the original show's conclusion, you can bet there will be plenty more.
That said, there was one extremely infamous death on the show (two, let's be honest) and now the man in charge of the entire AMC franchise has revealed that he constantly thinks about bringing the actor back to reprise the role.
Scott Gimple thinks about bringing Glenn back to the TWD Universe
AMC's Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead Universe Scott Gimple has opened up about the possibility of bringing actor Steven Yeun back to play Glenn Rhee in one of the franchise's ongoing spinoffs. Glenn was killed back in the seventh season of The Walking Dead but both his story and his legacy have lived on in The Walking Dead: Dead City, as his wife Maggie Rhee and son Hershel have been forced to team up with the man who killed him, Negan.
After the season 2 finale saw Maggie relive the tragedy of losing Glenn, as the relatively-reformed Negan went back to his dark ways and used his infamous bat Lucille to kill one of the season's villains, it's hard not to feel Glenn's presence in the TWD Universe. And that's something that Gimple himself still feels. When asked in an interview with Screen Rant about whether there had been any conversations about bringing Steven Yeun back for a cameo or flashback, he said that he still thinks about that possibility "all the time":
"I think it comes to mind all the time. In some ways, it's a pretty obvious way to go. But it would obviously be enjoyable for all of us. Steven is a remarkably busy dude, though - not to say that these folks aren't. You never know, I guess I'd say, but we never went that far with it."
It's true that Yeun is "remarkably busy". Since leaving The Walking Dead in 2016, the actor's career has continued to go from strength to strength. He starred in the 2020 movie Minari, which earned him an Academy Award nomination and went on to win an Emmy Award for his performance in the 2023 series Beef, which he produced and starred in. He also voices the titular character in the critically-acclaimed animated series Invincible and almost played the character of Sentry in Marvel Studios' Thunderbolts* (but reportedly had to exit due to scheduling conflicts).
Glenn was a fixture of The Walking Dead throughout its first six seasons and there was no reason to think that he wouldn't have been for its seventh either. Sure, like we said earlier it's a zombie show, but given that the series had just teased fans with Glenn's potential death only to reveal that he was actually alive, it was pretty baffling for it to just pull a 180 and kill the character just a few TWD episodes later. Response to both the character's death and the violent nature of it was divisive, with the majority of audiences believing that the show went too far and created its biggest ever mistake at the time.
Fans have been longing for Glenn to return in some capacity, but it likely wouldn't be a return from the dead all these years later. After all, he died on camera in what can only be described as an extremely definitive death scene. There is no rewriting that. And yet in television, you have the beauty of flashbacks and visions, which could explain why and how Yeun could potentially return as the character at some point in the future.
If a Glenn cameo ever were to happen, it would likely be in The Walking Dead: Dead City. With his wife Maggie, son Hershel, and killer Negan the three main characters of that show, there would be plenty of story opportunities for him to appear. As Glenn died before Hershel was born, a scene between Yeun and actor Logan Kim would be a truly incredible way of bringing the beloved hero back even if just for a moment.
The Walking Dead: Dead City is streaming on AMC+ now.
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