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‘The Walking Dead’ Must Kill This Character To Save Season 7

By Toni Matthews
Published on: 11:57 PST, Oct 23, 2016

Warning: This article may contain spoilers for Season 7 of The Walking Dead

The moment of truth has arrived for AMC’s The Walking Dead. The Season 7 premiere picks up where Season 6 had the audacity to end — on the gimmickiest of notes. We’re promised that this first episode will set everything right and that The Walking Dead will be so excellent that naysayers will be won back over.

I’m not entirely convinced. In all sincerity, the entire season, if not the entire show’s future, hangs on the death of a single character.

I’d previously concluded that The Walking Dead jumped the shark with Season 6’s “Thank You” episode. The “is he or isn’t he?” speculation over Glenn Rhee’s apparent demise worked for short-term hype. Unfortunately, the failure to kill Rhee eliminated any the suspense surrounding the series’ main protagonists.

Even worse, the intelligence-insulting manner in which the writers lazily explained away his death was a slap in the face to everyone. Yes, even those people threatening to leave the show if Glenn died.

The problem is that moment, rather than Negan’s bat Lucille, put the writers in an impossible situation. They needed to demonstrate fearlessness in character elimination and prove that The Walking Dead universe was a horrifying universe in which anyone could die at any moment.

Having failed that test miserably up until now, the writers are now tasked with showing they have teeth. Forbes hoped for Glenn’s survival while i09 suggests that it was indeed Glenn who met his comic book-based demise.

For the sake of The Walking Dead, it’s going to have to be Rhee that dies. Of all the characters — yes, even Rick Grimes — Glenn seems to have the most close-calls, and a few of them are rather inexplicable. But the non-death where he conveniently crawled under a dumpster? This story arc hurt the show’s credibility to a remarkable degree.

That means that Rhee will have to be the sacrificial lamb that puts The Walking Dead back on track. Of course, this assertion raises an important question: Could the show benefit from killing someone else in Glenn’s place? A preview clip makes the death in question feel ambiguous that it might be a few people who were killed by the villainous Negan: Glenn Rhee, Daryl Dixon, or possibly Morgan Jones.

It’s possible that offering up Daryl as a substitute would prove a gut-wrenching substitute…but then that would represent yet another instance of Glenn inexplicably escaping certain death. After all, it’s a situation where he is the one that was supposed to die. It might not help the show’s writers to chicken out once more. The only possible saving grace for a situation like this is if we lost both Dixon and Rhee in the same episode.

While that would give The Walking Dead back its emotional impact, it might be too gutsy of a move. The fact is, the boldness would come after repeatedly rescuing the most popular characters season after season. Compare this to Game of Thrones, a show that earned a reputation for repeatedly killing off those you won’t expect. Even the rival of Jon Snow didn’t prevent fans from being petrified by him during the “Battle of The Bastards.”

https://youtu.be/ToOIvD5mlow

When you feel like a character you love could die at any moment, you are more inclined to be emotionally invested. That The Walking Dead writers have failed to offer a similar feeling for a story set in the midst of a zombie apocalypse is rather telling.

As of my writing this article, the question of where the Walking Dead‘s creative team intend to take fans remains unanswered. We don’t know who got up close and personal with Lucille. We don’t know if the writers will show if they have the nerve or if we’re due for more cop-outs and gimmicks.

There is enough time to hope. If the Season 7 premiere does what it was meant to do with the Season 6 finale — kill Glenn — while offering up another shocking twist, there may be hope for the show. Otherwise, we should brace ourselves for the downward spiral to come.

Are you looking forward to The Walking Dead’s return? Share your thoughts below!

[Featured Image by AMC]

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