The Walking Dead almost gave Jesus a boyfriend

It turns out that The Walking Dead cut a very important scene from season 9, a scene that introduced us to someone very special to Jesus (Tom Payne). As if losing the character wasn’t enough, now we learn this? Why, The Walking Dead, why?!

Payne revealed this tidbit while on the podcast Talk Dead To Me. “Because we had that six-year time jump, I was always like, ‘I think [Aaron and Jesus] had a dalliance in those six years, and they just became friends afterwards.’ Which is nice. […] There was an iteration of the first episode of season 9 [where] I had a boyfriend in the first script, at Hilltop.”

Oh, come on! That would have been great to see! At least Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics do give us some romance between Jesus and Aaron. Unfortunately, it didn’t translate to the small screen, although they teased it often enough.

It rankles a bit that we can see Rosita fall in love with multiple people throughout the show but we couldn’t get one happily ever after for Jesus. (Well, happily ever after until he dies.) Not cool, The Walking Dead, not cool at all.

Jesus became a fan favorite character almost as soon as he was introduced. There was just something about his basic decency that made us feel like this rag-tag band of survivors just might make it out the other end of the zombie apocalypse okay. When we lost the character, things felt unbalanced. But even if we didn’t get to see him be happy with someone, I’m choosing to take this news as evidence that it at least happened offscreen. I guess that’s better than nothing?

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h/t Digital Spy