Did Gabriel make the right call in the latest episode of The Walking Dead?

Robert Patrick — T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day — made a surprise cameo in the latest episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead. While this time his character is not out to kill John Connor, he still plays a villain: Mays, a deranged survivor who forces Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) and Aaron (Ross Marquand) to play a brutal game of Russian Roulette. Patrick also played Mays’ twin brother, who makes a brief appearance at the end.

It turns out AMC didn’t have to work too hard to get Patrick on board for this role. Not only did he grow up in Atlanta, where much of the show is filmed, but he’s also a big fan, not to mention friends with a lot of people who work on the show. “Glen Mazzara was one of the writers and showrunners for a while,” he told Insider. “Scotty Wilson was an old friend of mine. Laurie Holden, I worked with on The X-Files, so thematically I was very curious about it and was a fan.”

"I often wondered, well, maybe someday I’ll get a shot to get down there. I’ve been busy doing other things, as well. And I’m just glad it finally fell into place where I could actually do it."

I suppose when you know that many people who work on the show, getting a part is pretty straightforward.

Caution: SPOILERS from here on out.

Did Gabriel make the right decision about Mays?

Patrick also got into Mays’ story. Mays mentions that he “killed” his brother after he tried to run off with all the supplies. After Gabriel talks him out of continuing the game of Russian Roulette, Mays begins to calm down. However, as soon as he lets his guard down, Gabriel kills him.

Many fans think Gabriel killing Mays was a little uncalled for. The man conceded, right? Did Gabe mess up? “I think Gabriel feels that he made the right call,” Patrick said. “My contention is that, no, I was a lost sheep. I let myself be vulnerable in front of the Father. Help me bring me back in. Like, you would go to a priest — bring me back into the flock. And I looked at him for that leadership, and I laid it out to him like that.”

"I said that to Seth the other day — I think [Gabriel] messed up. I really do. I think he should have brought me back to the flock, let me bring my brother back in. Let me find redemption with him. I could be an asset, and he said, ‘No, you’re, you’re just too crazy. You would have been a threat to the group."

For his part, Seth Gilliam disagrees. “I don’t think he had any hesitation about [killing Mays],” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I think yeah, it’s the right call. The guy’s a danger, the guy’s a threat, the guy’s unstable, the guy’s too damaged. He’s been wounded far beyond repair.”

As for filming the episode, it was pretty different from what Patrick was used to thanks to all the coronavirus precautions. “My thing was for the mechanics of the props,” he explained. “We had a gun we had to fire, we had the bullets, moving Aaron out of that room. [You had] all those practical beats that were in there. I was concerned that we weren’t going to be able to do it all in one long take, but we did. And it was so much fun. I can’t think if I’ve ever done a television show where I’ve had that long of a take in one scene. It was like a 20-minute take.”

It’s certainly impressive that The Walking Dead has found ways to keep filming in such a strange time. Kudos to them!

You can see new episodes of The Walking Dead season 10 Sundays on AMC. The next episode takes place directly after “A Certain Doom,” and will show us what happens to Eugene, Yumiko, Ezekiel and Princess after they were captured by the Commonwealth!

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