AMC’s ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead left fans in suspense for months at the end of season six, after new baddie Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) had Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his crew lined up on the ground to assassinate one of them in front of everyone left in the post-apocalyptic world that they cared about. The resulting deaths left many fans stunned and several critics swearing that they were quitting the show for good because of its blatant cruelty and cynicism, not only to the characters but also to viewers. (Beware, spoilers for the season seven premiere below.)
To preserve this secret, the crew filmed 11 alternative scenes where each of the members of Rick’s party was shown meeting his or her demise. Footage leaked online of Maggie (Lauren Cohan), a pregnant woman struggling to keep her pregnancy, meeting her end at the business end of a Louisville Slugger when the crew were intercepted by Negan. It’s even more disturbing than the scene that eventually aired.
In that scene, which caused uproar when screened this week, Negan killed Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) before turning his barbed wire-wrapped bat on beloved cast member and longtime survivor Glenn (Steven Yeun). Glenn’s death was especially grisly, showing his eye bulging from his skull as he mumbled a few words to his wife Maggie before his cranium crashed down.
While many were outraged by Glenn and Abraham’s deaths and the way Negan was shown meting out senseless violence, if Maggie’s were the version that aired it would have been even more crushing. It would have been bad enough for Negan to bludgeon a woman to death, but a pregnant woman would have made it intolerable. But it’s not like the choice was between killing Maggie and Abraham (or Maggie and Glenn); rather, it was which of these 11 deaths to put on television for viewers. Seeing this footage is evidence that showrunner Scott Gimble chose perhaps the least offensive option, and even that made plenty of people go ballistic.
That raises the question whether the writers should have reconsidered this storyline altogether – and, in keeping it, whether it should have been handled differently. Drawing the scene out not only for minutes during the episode, but also for months during hiatus, demonstrates to viewers that the most important thing on this show is not the relationships the characters have with each other or that the fans have with these characters, but rather shocking people with gory and glorified displays of destruction. Yes, this is a show about the zombie apocalypse, but that is not the show many of us signed up for.
