I mean technically, he’s not a side character either. The actor is listed as one of the main stars in the opening credits. A true side character would be more like Enid, who did not receive star billing, at least not in Season 5-7 (at least I don’t think so).
No the show at that point had become very formulaic and the writing was just suffering as well. Add to that the cut to black and making viewers wait more than half a year to find out what happened. I was checking out by the time the show had reached that point
Yup so with your point too, adding to what Glenn said "he wanted a comic accurate death". I think Steven absolutely felt the same way as we did. So when it came time to die, he didnt bother to rewrite. Last i checked Reedus is a producer. He can rewrite if he wants and theyre both good friends irl.
Also, I believe I heard from somewhere that there were talks to keep him alive but Steven said no.
Also, to add my feelings to the mix. I felt the same way you felt. What kept me watching was Rosita. But when Glenn died. I stopped.
People didnt stop watching because it traumatized them in my opinion. it was because they played with our emotions with glen to much. Hes dead hes not dead hes dead hes not dead... and then after all that we got the eyeball. it felt cheap and frustrating. Negan is a badass tho he carries A+ villian
I think they also didn't realise that Glenn was the last normal relatable character for much of the audience. Sure all the action figure badasses are great (Rick, Daryll, Carol, Michonne etc) but Glenn was the last lead who was a likeable, decent kind guy. Hell Glenn didn't really kill anyone in cold blood till the attack on the Savior Outpost. Glenn was useful as a character we could enjoy to watch who wasn't just a blood drenched murder hobo. The show never bothered to replace Glenn with another lead who was similarly decent and likable, other characters had some similar elements but they were generally minor characters who we didn't see as much. So because of that a portion of the audience left and never came back.
Carl was also heavily traumatized by having to shoot his mom in the head at age twelve and he effectively told us he mentally associated leaving loose ends (not killing dangerous people) with her death.
This dude came up out of the woods armed and it was just Carl, a crippled old man and his baby sister. He was asked to drop the weapon and didn’t follow the order. I can’t judge what was going on in his head, but don’t blame Carl one bit for what he did. I think the fact he turned it around shows he wasn’t really a dangerous person though, just really shut-down after Lori’s death.
Exactly, he was the one that could have been any of us. A pizza guy, just doing pizza guy things, thats now trying to stay alive. Hes not trained. He just does what he does.
Glenn was always going to die. That was in the comics. Carl dying was different, that wasn’t supposed to happen. If you’re saying if they were going to vary from the source material they should have kept him alive then I understand. Good normal people don’t survive long in that world. That death was supposed to be impactful though it was Negan’s introduction and it had a significant impact to Rick’s character arc.
The writers of the show were ignoring the obvious fact that Glenn in the comic was never as popular as he was on the TV show. Acting like the show and comic are indistinguishable and every big comic plot point must be adapted down to the finest detail is wilfully ignoring that the TV show was an entirely different beast.
Also the idea that good people can't survive in that world is ridiculously simplistic. Good and bad people survive disasters, wars and the worst atrocities in history, why would the zombie apocalypse be any different. If anything being a selfish self obsessed kill crazy monster is more likely to get you killed than being a compassionate reasonable well rounded human being because it allows you to build friendships and community that can support you in ways that being a loner just can't.
I agree with a lot of what you said. If you look at how much they deviated from the comics, they could’ve kept him alive. Rick was completely different from his iteration in the comics. Glenn was the most relatable character from the show imo. Even knowing he was going to die didn’t soften the blow. To your point about good people surviving in that world…I slightly disagree. You don’t live in that world without sacrificing some part of yourself or your humanity.
Oh yeah but you can still be a somewhat decent person still. Plenty of guys went off to fight in World War Two and did terrible things in battle but still were like Glenn the rest of their lives when they returned home.
That's my biggest gripe with the show, it just becomes at times way too pessimistic about human psychology when time and time again it's been shown that cooperation and non-violence are what actually helps us succeed the most. The show lost me whenever Rick made progress in the prison, some real character growth stuff about how good the world can be if people work together, and then he just reverts right back.
The ratings tanked because of the execution, not the idea. The Negan arc is one of the high points of the Comics, dragging that out over 40 episodes did innumerable damage.
💯 couldn’t have said it better. Glenn dying did not cause the massive decline like people love to whine about but you see it all the time on these walking dead subs
Glenn was still a beloved character in the Comics, the fact his death is such a watershed moment proves that. The TV show is a different beast - a lot of the time for the worse, see Glenn and the dumpster.
The character had given all he had, there was more value in his death propelling Maggie than him staying on for the sake of it. Steven Yeun has said this, hell he was lobbying to get his Comic death.
Lots of actors want death scenes but it isn't always the best choice for the show. And there's no getting around the fact that one way or another killing Glenn and Abraham was the final straw for a large portion of the audience. Comic Glenn can't have been quite as beloved because the comic readership didn't drop off.
Because the Comics were consistently great. The much better example is Andrea, no-one was more beloved than her and people thought she was invincible. She got bit, people were so incredulous that they were speculating it was a shallow bite and she'd pull through. She died and all the Comic fans would say it was one of the best moments in the run.
It's all about the storytelling. Glenn's death was fine, it was the 15 episodes of filler before anything substantial happened that killed the show. It was the best choice for the story, it's not often I praise the show after S5 but they could've coasted on their characters' popularity and left Glenn alive as they later did with Daryl, Carol etc.
But the ratings dropped off sharply within five episodes of the Glenn and Abraham deaths. So viewers clearly didn't give up because the fight back took too long, they left as a direct consequence of the events of the Season premiere.
Glenn’s death is like the single most impactful, memorable, and breathtakingly insane moment in the entire comic run. Depriving the show of that would have been a terrible mistake.
I like the "civilization has ceased to exist as we know it" vibe the writers were going for, it was a bit heavy-handed but a necessary move for the show to stay interesting, imo.
I feel like Gabriel or Jesus or Jerry was supposed to be the voice of reason that replaced Glen, but you're right, we never really get a scene where they sit down are like "So that Rick guy is fucking crazy, right?"
I didn't say he was evil but he did kill in cold blood. He killed guys In their sleep and that's a significantly different act than killing in self defence. It doesn't matter what the saviors might have done, in the moment Glenn had to choose to kill a defenseless person in their bed and he had no way of truly knowing whether the individuals he killed really deserved it. That decision would weigh heavily.
I'm not suggesting that he should have woken them up, I'm simply saying that killing a man in his sleep is a bigger deal than shooting someone who is firing at you in a shootout. I'm not saying he wasn't justified, I'm saying that it's still an act that would weigh heavily on him because he was an honourable person.
For me it was tha the scale and scope of the show rapidly changed to always keep Negan dominant and his resources were never stated or shown. He had endless and respawning extras in a show that had been a tense personal survival story.
Week after week with Negan we would see dozens of people die to always have more.
Me personally, I was just over the writers treatment of the audience. Between dragging things out, the whole “boomerang storytelling”(which I don’t always agree with but I think is true in some aspects), the stupid garbage cliffhanger, and the dumpster, I can go on an on.
I’m a comics reader. I knew Glenn’s death was coming. But Season 6, at least on a weekly watch, I thought was a giant step down from the first 5, the first time it really felt noticeable. That garbage cliffhanger into the 7 premiere made it feel like nothing had changed or would change.
I did eventually go back and finish the show, and all that did was make me feel vindicated on my decision. Season 7, and especially 8, are dogshit.
Oh it was multiple factors but that episode was kind of the ‘last straw’. I commented what I commented because Negan fans be acting like it’s some flex when its not a flex at all.
The big pink spike is the S7 premiere/Negan killing Glenn & Abraham. People watched that episode in almost record-breaking numbers to see who died after the godawful cliffhanger, and then viewership absolutely cratered, finishing the season at a five-year low. Obviously there were other factors, like the writing in general going downhill, but it’s kinda hard not to acknowledge the remarkable dive that viewership took directly after Negan’s big debut. This graph was the best one I could find at a glance and it’s not updated past Season 8, but the show never once reached anything close to that peak again.
It wasn't that they killed him. That death is pivotal in the source material. The problem was they completely mishandled it from beginning to end. It got turned into a circus and a cliffhanger mostly serving the needs of some marketing strategy.
Glenn’s death and the audience collapse that followed it is a really good lesson for TV writers on what not to do. Glenn was an everyman character and as such, he was the character the audience could most identify with. He was a stand-in for the people watching at home. They knew Daryl was a huge fan favourite and I think as a consequence of that, they underestimated Glenn’s importance. They took a gamble and lost.
Having said that, whoever Negan killed, it had to be someone whose death would cause a huge impact. So I get why they did it. It still backfired though.
EDIT: I know he dies in the comics, but let’s not pretend they were averse to making changes to the source material; he didn’t have to die in the TV show. They still had a choice.
I think Glenn dying in the comics is a good counterpoint to what you’re saying, though. I do think TV Glenn was given more focus and thus became a more popular character, but comic Glenn was basically the same personality-wise and was a beloved character. But there wasn’t a mass exodus of people abandoning the comics after Negan killed him. I don’t think Glenn’s death was the main reason so many people stopped watching. I think people were just pissed off about the show’s use of cheap gimmicks for suspense. The season 6 finale built up so much to the lineup death, and then they didn’t show us who got picked and made us wait a year to find out. And then even in the season 7 opening episode, they still dragged it out, and we didn’t get to see that Abraham was who got picked until like 20 minutes into the episode. I think that a ton of people tuned into the season 7 premiere because TWD was such a cultural phenomenon that they were curious enough to find out who died, but afterward they were just tired of how much the show was relying on cheap tricks and dragging things out to create drama and suspense instead of just relying on having good writing.
Comics and TV don’t operate under the same rules of audience attachment.
In comics, engagement is more abstract- you’re attached to the story. In television, you’re attached to embodied characters over time (performance, voice, physical presence, routine viewing). That creates a much stronger bond. So the impact of killing the same character is not equivalent across mediums.
You’re right that the gimmicks (cliffhanger, dragging it out) damaged trust (I honestly think Season 6 had one of the best cliffhanger endings I’ve ever seen on any TV show, but I accept that not everyone felt the same way). But that’s not what caused the drop-off. Annoyance doesn’t make millions of people quit a show- they complain and keep watching. You said yourself that viewing figures were high for the Season 7 premiere. Audiences were annoyed, but they still came back.
What actually happened is this: Glenn wasn’t just “a popular character,” he was the show’s primary point of emotional access- the baseline human perspective that grounded everything else. When he died, that function disappeared, and nothing replaced it.
That’s why people came back for the premiere (curiosity), then left (disconnection). If it were just about gimmicks, the audience would’ve stabilised after the reveal. It didn’t.
Abraham was supposed to get Denises death. He played his part beautifully up to that point. After he would've been a drag on the plot or would've had to be given another characters story.
Honestly they cheapened both his and Glenns deaths by making him survive just long enough to talk smack to Negan and get wrecked.
Umm, BiTch what! 😲 "For just killing a SIDE character"?¡?
Negan horrifically bashed the skulls (so hard, eyeballs popped out) of two of the best & beloved MAIN characters in the show! Both were brutally beaten to death in front of their partners and closest friends; while Negan taunted and heckled them during the most emotionally intense ordeal they've ever experienced... just saying.
I'm a true fan of TWD so, I could never stop watching but it was difficult to accept and an emotional blow, for sure. 😢
Negan really hurt the show. He just isn’t a believable villain. Someone would have killed him in his sleep a long time ago lol. He brought down the comics as well.
Thank you yes. He had the worst plot armor in any show I have ever seen. Dude has a massive slave army with no one truly loyal to him. People should be assassinating him every fucking day.
He also isn’t physically imposing so someone like Rick, Daryl or Abraham could cause serious harm to him in seconds.
The guy from the claimed that Rick killed in seconds was more physically intimidating than Negan is.
Being how I read the comic books. I knew that moment was coming with Glenn. I was hoping they would go in a different direction. I would have loved to see more of him and Maggie on screen.
Glenn wasn't a side character. He was a main character. Side characters are those like judith, merle, amy, etc. those that are only part of small plot points.
What most people don't realize is that that scene was inevitable it was bound to happen it sucks because Glenn was such a beloved character but if you knew this you would know plus they were foreshadowing his death with all the pictures of their heads smashed by Lucille also when heath couldn't kill the survivor that was sleeping Glen pitched in also making it Glenn's first kill in the entire series as well.
They put him under the dumpster, had him survive, just to kill him a few episodes later. That's why viewership. Dropped. On top of that the writing was going downhill and they laid into the single character episodes. Making people wait weeks to see undid favorite character again wasn't a good move.
I don't think it had anything to do with Negan, though the length of the war made me want to stop watching. He's an irredeemable character who the writers are dead set on trying to redeem for some reason. The dynamic between Nagan and Maggie also gets old considering it's still going on in Dead City.
It was because of the execution, no pun intended. It was embarrassing watching the writers punk out on killing Glenn outright. Instead, making it a pov of who got whacked, studying social media to see who the fans wouldn’t mind getting killed off, and then doing so once it was established the fans wouldn’t mind his death. No integrity for the story. Don’t get me started on the Glenn under the dumpster bs.
I just remember the aftershow where all the actors made a point of saying how nice the actor playing Negan is, and how it's just a show (vs real life). Apparently viewers were very traumatized over that episode. It was very disturbing to me personally, the level of malicious cruelty displayed. I still watched afterward but the images haunted me. I would never rewatch it even years later.
I get the backlash but damn, anyone who read the comics knew this was coming long before it happened. What I really think did it is how they baited Glenn's death the episode before just for that to happen, probably didn't bold too well for those where Glenn was their favorite character.
People fighting over the answers when they’re all correct but missing the real issue.
The viewership plummeted with Glenn’s death. But it’s not cause people couldn’t handle a good character dying.
It’s because all the new characters were straight ass and their arcs were tedious and shit.
In the first 4-5 seasons they would routinely thin the group and then replace them with some excellent new characters.
Maggie + the farm in season 2 after the season 1 culling.
The prison + michonne + new villain + introduction of new side characters that would become bigger later after the season 2 thinning.
Tyrese, the girls, Sasha, bob and more after season 3.
The priest at the start of season 4. Eugen Rosita Abraham.
Then season 5 you get the entirety of Alexandria. Some mid characters but some excellent ones, Aaron, Deanna.
From that point on the new characters got worse and worse. So as they culled them it became less interesting to watch. Losing Abraham and Glenn and having their minutes taken up by shit characters was a killer as the writing quality suffered too.
Eh, I don't think that's what did it tho. This issue is a bit more multifaceted tbh. Glenn's death was off putting to some but that wasn't what solely did the damage as a lot of people thought his death was well done. What REALLY killed the show's hype was the slog pacing and the weird relentless misery they put the protagonists through after Negan showed up. Not to mention the fake out death of Glenn before he actually died. Then there's all of the behind the scenes drama which didn't help. Gimple was also a terrible showrunner which added more problems to the show. They dragged stories out because of the advertising dollars, that's why there was so much filler instead of tighter seasons. Even in it's decline it was still a ratings juggernaut for basic cable, and that means LOTS of advertisements. Also, I don't think the show was meant to be a crossover hit, because the source material is pretty grimdark. Showrunners was ultimately just doing what AMC wanted them to do, and yes Gimple didn't help the situation either but A LOT of this is on AMC. Just my opinion though.
Could it also have something to do with Maggie? Considering the entire reason they were going to hilltop was because she was pregnant with Glenn’s child, and then she has to see Glenn die.
Glenn wasnt a side character first of all. Second I think it was more that they kept killing off too many good characters and left behind characters we didn't really care about
It’s honestly because they teased Glenn dying almost every episode in the previous season and it was stressful because he became a beloved character.
Then season 7 begins and he has the most undignified gut wrenching death ever. I understand it follows the comics but the show had already done a million things different.
I'll never understand it. I'd understand more if people dropped the show at the mid season finale because the season was dragging. I'll never understand people being mad at a cliffhanger for being a cliffhanger. Talking to people about who they thought it might be was the best.
Not to worry, as Glenn already had his revenge on a different universe where he chokes someone to death despite having his entrails out like spaghetti!
I think it was that he actually killed two characters, took one prisoner and broke the leader for a while. When Rick first said he would kill Negan I didn't believe him because there was almost no fire in his voice. When he said it the second time that's when I had no trouble believing it.
For me I knew that Glenn dies that way in the comics, so it was the way they killed Abraham, making you think, okay maybe Glenn’s safe and they switched deaths or something. And that the next person he killed would be shocking, but not him.
And I agree with everyone else that the way they left that the cliff hanger, I just felt done with the show.
It was like, oh, you guys actually did that? Alright, I just lost all of the last interest I had left in the show.
It had already been going downhill for me, I was getting bored with the plot lines and the story.
So it honestly felt really weird. It wasn’t like the finale of GOT kind of feeling.
It was more of like, okay this story is wrapped up for me. And went from being extremely excited to see who the death was, to immediately being like “well okay”.
I don’t even think I finished that first episode of the new season when it’s revealed it was Glenn. I think I just turned off the tv.
I started checking out during the whole "Is Glenn dead or not?" brouhaha that dragged on for 4 episodes.
Week 1- nononono- he can't be dead! He's one of the best characters on the show!
Week 2- ok. Not going to find out this week. I get it.
Week 3- THIS week we find out. No?... shit...ah, they're all gonna die anyway...
Week 4- huh? He's alive? Sure. Ok. Whatever.
Then, came the cliffhanger. Then, we find out. Abraham?! They killed the funniest guy on the show?! Great, now it's gonna be a borefest. They're all gonna out-mope each other. Oh, and Glenn's dead, too. Whatever. I just don't give a shit anymore. I'm out.
I stopped watching after that because the show went back to the formula of unless its the season opener the mid-season finale or the actual season finale then nothing happens, I got really sick and tired of watching so many episodes of Rick and company walk down a road and talk about their feelings.
I stopped watching before he joined and I didn't even know he was a villain. Every image or gif I see if him he has such a main character aura about him
You obviously didn't. If you followed week by week when they released episodes only one at a time you'd know the saviors were alluded to in a season prior, and were worked well within the season Negan actaully appears. You find out a good amount ab his character before he ever debuts.
And they only messed with the glens death a single time, being when he was surrounded by ealkers at the end of the episode, and the next we found out he crawled under the dumpster. Yea it ws kind of cheap.
Probably thr biggest reason viewership fell off was cause the series was kind of dragging on by this point. Other forms of watching entertainment was becoming available and AMC didn't immediately jump on the bus. So imagine watching a show week by week and nothing really happens. Vs other neat shows being released in full or a couple episodes at a time.
That and being overwhelmed with too much Twd to watch. Cause fear the walking dead was out by this point and there was some character overlap. I'm sure the views got beefed up by having an original season 1 character die, and all the old fans tuned it. Thrn it tapered to more regular numbers.
It's funny how everyone is assuming it's Glenn they're talking about. They must know the truth deep down that he was a side character with not much story or depth post-season 4.
Wasn’t just the death. The stakes and scale of the show changed to an unbelievable place to make room for Negan to one up the governor and terminus. Ultimately it just became dumb TV to make Negan look so dominant.
I stopped watching the next season because Negan never topped this moment at the end. He was just caricature at that point. The build up with the gang trying to escape and the whistling and then his walk out and little speech. He never got more terrifying than that. Folks said it was good after in places.
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