The Walking Dead is known for its graphic, brutal, disgusting death scenes. They don’t really hold back when it comes to that stuff, with makeup guru Greg Nicotero making sure the effects are as pulpy and sticky as possible.
And you know one instance where they really don’t hold back? The season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead, when Negan used his baseball bat Lucille to beat Glenn and Abraham to death.
I’m still trying to erase that horrendous scene from my mind all these years later. And it turns out that Michael Cudlitz, who played the late Abraham, feels the same. He said as much during an interview on Skybound’s Talk Dead to Me podcast.
"I always think it was a bridge too far, personally. I thought it was too much. Either one of us should have lived a little bit longer because I think…people were very affected by it. They said, ‘Oh, my gosh, it was the most graphic brutal deaths. It was murder porn.’ All this stuff."
I mean, we all saw the pictures of Steven Yuen’s makeup effects as Glenn’s eye bulged out of his head, right? It was gnarly.
"The fact that I think you loved Abraham and Glenn so much as an audience, that’s what makes it more brutal, and you sort of think, ‘Oh, ok. Oh, my gosh. It was Abraham. We’re sad that it was Abraham, but thank God it wasn’t Glenn.’ And, ‘OK. Oh, my gosh. OK.’ And, ‘Oh, my God. It’s Glenn, too! What are you doing to me?’ I think it’s the one-two punch that was maybe a little too much."
I think a lot of us still look back at that moment and can’t figure out what the hell happened…or why.
Nonetheless, The Walking Dead just doesn’t shy away from controversial character deaths. They go all in, and show no remorse. Maybe that’s what made the series so special in the first few seasons; they went where no one else would to.
That said, sometimes The Walking Dead does pull back a bit and spare us the worst of things. Beth (Emily Kinney) was actually supposed to die two seasons before she did, in the midst of a brutal slaughter. I don’t think I would have wanted to see that, so thanks to The Walking Dead writers for rethinking that one.
And while we’re talking about Beth, while talking on an episode of the Instagram show Let’s Stay Together, Kinney said she would be happy to come back:
Now your first reaction to this might be: ‘How? She’s dead.’ But this is The Walking Dead we’re talking about; plenty of characters have returned in flashbacks and the like. Andrew Lincoln’s final episode, for example, featured many faces from the past, including Herschel (Scott Wilson) and Shane (Jon Bernthal). So it’s by no means impossible.
“I mean, I did get shot in the head,” Kinney admitted. “But I mean, I loved the show, I loved working on it. It makes me so happy to be a part of it, I’m very proud of being a part of that show. So it’s not out of … if there was some way, sure.”
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h/t Cinema Blend (Cudlitz), Cinema Blend (Kinney)