We’ve been posting a poll maybe three times a year to get your predictions on who will die next on the TV show The Walking Dead. The season six finale is tomorrow night, and this would be the time to place your bets under normal circumstances. But this finale is different, and a poll just seems pointless. Continue reading for the reasons why, which will contain spoilers for those not current on the series, and comic book spoilers, too.
In the beginning, The Walking Dead bucked TV series convention with its willingness to kill off major characters. In the last year and a half, that has gone out the window. Sure, there have been many deaths, but they’ve all been original residents of Alexandria and fairly new to viewers. The last few polls saw only minor characters killed off.
The talk about the show this entire year has been about the arrival of Negan, the worst villain yet in the comic book series. It’s been more than a year since the announcement that Negan will be played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and we expected to see him in each episode, but we’ve been strung along for the entire year and he will only show up in the finale. Probably in the last few minutes of the 90-minute finale. In the comics, he kills Glenn with a barbwire-covered baseball bat he calls Lucille. We know that the TV show often switches characters around while keeping major plots, so that means little at this point. But someone is going to get the bat.
Fans take a surge in character development to be a sign of impending death. It happened in a hurry with Denise, so characters who’ve gotten more screen time lately seem to be in more danger.
It probably won’t be Michonne. Clues that it might be Daryl or Glenn. But probably not Glenn. More likely to be Daryl.
TVOM has predictions without much in the way of reasoning behind them, but the graphics are sweet.
Then there is the awful possibility that while Negan does kill a major character, we will be left all summer wondering which character it is. Over the past couple of weeks, a cliffhanger is looking more and more likely. When the moment comes, the production will switch to the point of view of the victim, and we will not know who it is that dies until October, inducing rage among fans followed by months of “Who shot JR?” speculation. That is the real reason why there is no poll for the finale, but there will certainly be one for the season seven premiere in October.