Over the course of its 11 seasons, The Walking Dead has inspired some passionate fan discourse and even more passionate reactions to certain character deaths. It's never easy to watch your favorite character (or characters!) die, no matter what show you're watching. But in its seventh season, The Walking Dead stayed true to the comics and divided fans right away.
In The Walking Dead season 7 episode 1, titled "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be," Negan made a brutal, bloody, and excessively violent show of killing Glenn, which caused quite a few implications for the show moving forward. Not only was Negan's relationship with Maggie changed, as she immediately wanted revenge, but actor Steven Yeun never returned to the franchise.
Now, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's looking back on his character's past actions and admits that he wishes Negan hadn't killed Glenn. In an a game of Hot Ones Versus with Lauren Cohan, Morgan was asked which The Walking Dead storyline shouldn't have made it out of the writers' room, and while he was initially apprehensive to answer, he confessed that Negan shouldn't have been killed Glenn.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan wishes Negan didn't kill Glenn
"I’m just gonna say this, it would have made both our lives easier... Maybe not kill Glenn," Morgan said. "It would have shifted the stories in a lot of ways, but [Maggie] wouldn't be mad at me." Cohan agreed that if Glenn hadn't been killed, maybe Negan and Maggie could have been "buddies."
Morgan went on to state that Glenn probably would have eventually died in a different manner and in that case, Negan wouldn't have been involved. He seemingly picked this popular fan take "just to be safe," as to not share any other negative opinions about The Walking Dead storylines. (After all, he still has to star in the third season of Dead City.) But fans were quick to agree with him.
Even though Glenn's death was depicted onscreen just as it was in the comics, the decision to kill off the character in the way that the show did, with Negan beating him to death with his beloved spiked baseball bat Lucille, was polarizing. You can still see fans sharing their dislike for the character's death in the comments section of Morgan's Hot Ones confession. Many fans have admitted that they stopped watching the show after that episode, which caused the show's noticeable ratings decline.
While season 7 opened to huge viewership numbers for the series, exceeding 17 million viewers, the rest of the season sharply decreased week after week, which was a trend that continued through the remaining four seasons of the AMC hit. The Walking Dead fans are always vocal about the mistakes the show made, and Glenn's death always tops the list.
It's interesting to consider that when it comes to adaptations from books or comics, most loyalists prefer a faithful adaptation, which is what The Walking Dead tried to do with Negan killing Glenn. However, the violent scene rubbed comic fans and those who only watched the show the wrong way. Some TWD fans trail the franchise's decline back to this moment, feeling like the show never quite rediscovered its footing. But the franchise is still on the air almost 10 years removed from Glenn's death.
After being killed off the series, actor Steven Yeun went on to star in a number of successful projects, like his Academy Award-nominated starring role in the film Minari and his Emmy Award-winning performance in the first season of Netflix's anthology series Beef. For Yeun, Glenn's fate seems to have been a blessing in disguise, but Morgan agrees with the fans that it was too much.
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