Even Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead thinks they shouldn’t have killed Glenn

“The Walking Dead” now exists as a loose network of spin-off series, and one of these series recently featured Andrew Lincoln himself, returning as Rick Grimes to escape from captivity and reunite with his family.

Empire has uploaded a new interview with Andrew Lincoln in which he reflects on his time on the show and in particular comments on the most controversial twist in the show’s history:

“I still think Glenn’s death may have been because we overdid it with the omelet,” he said. “Maybe it took too long.”

The Season 5 premiere, in which Glenn was killed off, was the show’s peak in terms of viewership, as 17 million viewers tuned in. But the next week, the series lost two million viewers, and years later, the show barely had 1.5 million viewers per season. The series finale reached 2.2 million.

It was a high in that sense, but a low in others. I have been watching this show for a decade and Glenn’s death is routinely was cited as a reason why many viewers stopped watching the series. And the way it was implemented was also a problem. Not only because of the bloodshed, but also because of the cliffhanger in season 4 and the fake killing of Abraham, which rubbed many people the wrong way.

Yes, Glenn dies in almost the same way as he did in a key moment in the comics, but alongside other changes to the source material and avoided deaths (Carol was supposed to die incredibly early, Daryl didn’t even exist), this felt like a case where they had to gauge sentiment to see how poorly this would be received. I’d say it also hampered Maggie’s character, as it became her entire personality for years and she didn’t have enough else to do other than be angry at Negan. This still happens to this day in their spin-off series Dead City.

The interview, at least the parts of it that are online, don’t seem to go into detail about why exactly Andrew Lincoln surprisingly left the show before the final seasons, though it was reportedly to spend more time with his family who lived abroad. But for The Ones Who Live, he returned to give him and Michonne a closing chapter. While Dead City and Daryl Dixon are getting second seasons, there’s no news on a second season of the alleged The Ones Who Live miniseries or a return of Rick in any other capacity. I still miss him though.

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