The irony of The Walking Dead is that anyone who can use Google knows that Glenn is most likely the person at the business end of Negan’s bat, considering he is the character Negan offed in the comic book when he was first introduced. It’s like a cruel trick a dog trainer plays when he pretends to throw a ball, sending the dog running after nothing. Now, The Walking Dead might not be taking death out of the equation, but it is using it to toy with our emotions, dangling it over characters and then snatching it away at the last moment. It’s not the uncertainty of death that makes the show powerful it’s the finality of it. It seems as though The Walking Dead is misreading its fans. After using him as the cliffhanger, the show made us wait to find out that nothing of consequence had really happened. We had to wait until the final act to find out, and Daryl was bloodied but alive. When the finale started, all fans wanted to know was whether Daryl was dead or alive. Something similar happened at the end of the penultimate episode, in which fan favorite Daryl was shown getting shot and the camera was smothered with his blood. Ultimately, he survived a seemingly impossible situation. Actor Steven Yeun’s name was even removed from the credits so eagle-eyed fans would be thrown off the trail. Fans had to wait almost a month to find out if he made it out alive. Witness earlier this season when Glenn seemingly fell into a herd of zombies to his death. But the show is starting to use that power for evil instead of good. The Walking Dead was truly a place where, as in the real zombie apocalypse, anyone could die at any moment (RIP Andrea). The Walking Dead revolutionized how we see beloved characters dying on TV Just as Game of Thrones killed off seemingly essential characters before the end of its first season, no one on The Walking Dead was safe either, including Rick’s wife Lori and his best friend Shane, neither of whom made it past season three.

Both are based on source material that doesn’t give a hoot about actors’ contracts, fans’ feelings, or any of the usual narrative tactics that allowed TV regulars to survive even the stickiest of situations. Along with Game of Thrones, which debuted six months later, The Walking Dead revolutionized how we see beloved characters dying on TV. The Walking Dead is starting to have a problem with cliffhangers and it has to do with its unique position regarding the deaths of its regular characters.

But the big laugh is that we now have to wait six months to find out who got hit in the head. The trickle of blood made me laugh, because it seemed so lo-fi for a show with such amazing production values that it can light a giant log jam on fire on an abandoned highway in Georgia.

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