The Walking Dead decided to change a large number of things from the comics but ultimately kept its most harrowing kill in place, Negan executing Glenn with a bat in the most brutal way possible.
That moment has haunted the series for years, as the show’s ratings dropped, losing a full two million viewers by the next episode, and the series never recovered. If you ask most Walking Dead viewers when they stopped watching, probably 70% of them will say Glenn’s death, which seemed like it went too far even though yes, it was very much faithful to the comic. Other controversial deaths like Carl Grimes, were not.
Now, in a First We Feast interview between Maggie’s Lauren Cohan and Negan’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan to promote their show Dead City, Morgan says outright that if there was one plotline he would change, it’s that kill.
Morgan: I’m just gonna say this, it would have made both our lives easier, maybe not kill Glenn.
Cohan: Yeah
Morgan: It would have shifted the stories in a lot of ways, but you wouldn’t be mad at me.
Cohan: Wait, maybe we’d be like buddies!
Morgan: Yeah, we’d probably be buddies! I mean, Glenn probably would have died some other way, but I wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. So I’ll say that just to be safe.
It seems like a huge mistake in hindsight to both kill Glenn from a story perspective and also to lose actor Steven Yeun, who went on to be both a Best Actor Oscar nominee, the first Asian-American nominated, and went on to win an Emmy for his role in Beef. Now, he stars in one of Amazon’s biggest shows, Invincible. Yeun did not seem pleased with his death and never returned to the show for any sort of guest dream/flashback spot the way nearly all other characters did.
The Walking Dead made many mistakes over the years, but that was arguably the biggest, comic faithful or not. Now, I’ve speculated that the entire series is winding down, reduced to just two shows, Maggie and Negan’s Dead City and Daryl Dixon’s Daryl Dixon. Daryl’s show is at least somewhat higher-profile and constantly renewed, where I am less confident in the future of Dead City after season 2 here. AMC does not want to let go, but maybe it’s time to move on. The glory days are long behind the series, and yes, it really did peak with the pre-Negan Glenn kill. After that, the fall began.
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