‘The Walking Dead’ season 6, episode 7 reaction: Show boss defends Glenn storyline
“The Walking Dead” season 6 has delivered quite an array of surprises over the course of its run, but perhaps the biggest non-shocker ever was the fact that Glenn was, of course not actually dead. This was an elaborate trick on the part of producers, or at least that is how we feel about it. The thing that frustrates us the most is that the producers waited almost a month in order to reveal the truth to the viewers, when they could have easily changed it up after one week. We don’t know why this one makes us so much more frustrated than Jon Snow on “Game of Thrones”; it may because that show routinely kills off characters, so the fact that Jon makes it through (provided he does) is actually a little more of a surprise. Plus, there could still be complicated.
Obviously, it is not lost on showrunner Scott M. Gimple that there are divided feelings over how the show handled keeping Glenn “dead” for weeks, and he defended it on “Talking Dead” (per The Hollywood Reporter) by saying that their intention as producers was mostly to put viewers in the shoes of people on the show, who were struggling to come to terms with whether or not the character is still alive:
“The story we were telling was one of uncertainty … When people leave the walls, in this case Alexandria, they don’t have cell phones. They aren’t rocking ’80s beepers. You don’t know what happens. You have no idea. When they leave, that could be the last time you ever see them. It was important to do a story this year about uncertainty and that the audience would share that uncertainty that the characters had, like in episode five: Maggie (Lauren Cohan) didn’t know what happened to Glenn, and I wanted the audience to be exactly where she was and to feel the exact same way.”
Ultimately, our feeling remains the same that we’re thrilled that Steven Yeun still has a job, but at the same time, the show seemed to be mostly toying with fans for the sake of attention and ratings with this twist. It just wasn’t needed, especially since Glenn seems fine and there are no far-reaching complications for what happened.
You can see more of what Yeun had to say himself about this twist by heading over to the link here now! Also, sign up over here to get some other TV scoop on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: AMC.)