The Walking Dead’s Overreliance On Shocking Character Deaths

Rewatching The Walking Dead season 1 after all these years made me realize just how much the show relied on the shock factor of killing off its major characters. The Walking Dead came along at a time when TV shows were starting to kill their darlings. Previously, even in a high-stakes show like The Sopranos, the main cast was usually safe.

But after Game of Thrones beheaded Ned Stark and The Walking Dead killed off Shane (twice), all bets were off. Now, it’s standard for prestige TV dramas to kill off their characters — it’s the new normal. If all the main characters survive to the end, it feels like the writers are playing it safe.

Rewatching The Walking Dead Season 1 Highlights How Many Characters Die

I recently went back and rewatched The Walking Dead season 1, and what stuck out to me was just how many characters were killed off early on. The season consists of just six episodes, making it the shortest season of the show by far, and there are 28 deaths crammed into those episodes. Five of these deaths are major named characters.

Andrea’s sister Amy and Carol’s abusive husband Ed are both killed by walkers that make it into the camp. Jim is bitten in the torso and left to reanimate. Dr. Edwin Jenner self-destructs his CDC lab when he gives up hope, and Jacqui stays with him to die. It was clear early on that The Walking Dead leaned on death-related drama.

The Walking Dead Depended A Little Too Much On Character Deaths

Over the following 10 seasons, The Walking Dead depended a bit too much on killing off its characters. The frequency of character deaths was necessary to show the danger of living in this zombie-infested post-apocalyptic world. Some of The Walking Dead’s character deaths even made the show better; I don’t think anyone is complaining that Ed didn’t stick around for longer.

But some of the character deaths felt like the writers were just using the plot device of an untimely death for some cheap shock value, or to manipulate the audience’s emotions. A good example of emotional manipulation was Sophia’s death, revealed after the group had been looking for her for half a season, but an egregious example would be Glenn’s unnecessarily graphic hat-on-a-hat demise seconds after Abraham’s.

In many cases, characters who still had a lot of potential for development and storylines were cut down in their prime — like Jessie, whose relationship with Rick was just getting started. This is a problem that The Walking Dead franchise still has. In The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’s season 3 premiere, Stephen Merchant’s exciting new character didn’t even make it to the end credits.