The 10 saddest deaths in The Walking Dead history

Very few TV shows have reputations for killing off beloved characters on a frequent basis; it might just be Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Over the course of 150 episodes, we’ve seen plenty of tear-jerking, controversial deaths. With the show coming to an end later this year, let’s take a look back at some of the saddest.

Prepare to cry.

10. Tyreese

Tyreese Williams (Chad Coleman) first appeared in the season 3 episode “Made To Suffer” and quickly became a key figure in our group. He was the type of character everyone else would look up to; a good leader, but not someone who was feared by his people, unlike so many leaders throughout the series.

In the season 5 episode “What Happened and What’s Going On,” Tyreese slowly bleeds out after getting his arm amputated following a walker bite. As we know from the show’s lore, if a survivor is bitten on the arm or leg, the disease can be prevented from spreading through amputation. However, Tyreese is unable to receive proper treatment quickly enough.

What makes his final moments so heartbreaking is the various hallucinations he sees as he’s slowly dying; visions of people he’s loved and lost along the journey.

His death in the show is completely different from the comics. On the page, Tyreese suffers the same fate as Hershel, getting his head chopped off by the Governor. The show offers something slower and heavier. It’s a death that fans continue to talk about to this day.

9. Jesus

Most of the villains in The Walking Dead history have been pretty samey. The majority of the time, they’re leaders of seemingly idyllic communities who welcome everyone in with welcome arms, only for our group to later learn that there are darker things going on under the surface. However, in season 9, the show introduced the Whisperers, who changed the game completely.

Led by Alpha (Samantha Morton), the Whisperers wore zombie skins to blend in with the undead, making them hard to spot. Because of this, they were able to catch our group off guard on several occasions. Perhaps the most infamous of their kills came when they murdered Jesus (Tom Payne) in season 9. The way everyone is made to believe the whisperer is a zombie, only for him to completely evade Jesus’ attack and stab came as a complete shock.

This death took everyone by surprise and set up the Whisperer War arc. For them to kill Jesus, a fan-favorite character, only made it hit that much harder.