The 10 Biggest "Walking Dead" Controversies
This post contains spoilers for The Walking Dead.
1. The Governor’s threatened rape of Maggie. Back in season three, when the Governor was still causing trouble and keeping walker heads locked up in aquariums, he kidnapped Glenn and Maggie, and interrogated them. For Maggie, this meant that the Governor threatened to rape her, and forced her to remove her shirt and bra. Some viewers objected to the use of rape as a plot device, while others felt the scene was shot in such a way that it “eroticized” Maggie’s body. No matter your feelings, it’s safe to say nobody was sad to see the Governor go.
2. The double child murder. The Walking Dead, having “dead” right there in the title, obviously involves a lot of death, but the episode where Lizzie and Mika died was one of the first times things went a little too far. In season four’s “The Grove,” Carol and Tyreese figured out that Lizzie had some difficulty understanding how dangerous walkers really are. She fed them mice at the prison, yelled at Carol for killing her zombie “friend,” and then killed her own sister so her corpse would reanimate. Carol’s abrupt solution to this problem was to kill Lizzie, who had supposedly become too dangerous to handle. This event was directly inspired by an incident in the comics, but you have to wonder why no one even tried to come up with an alternative course of action besides “shoot that kid in the head.” Sure, babysitting her around the clock would have been difficult, but at least gave that a quick try before telling her to look at the flowers while you put a bullet in her brain.
3. Beth’s death. As mentioned, people die all the time on TWD, but their deaths aren’t usually as annoying as Beth’s demise. After getting abducted in season four, Beth didn’t show up again 'til the fourth episode of season five, at which point she was shown to be living in the Grady Memorial Hospital with a bunch of “only the strong survive” types. Her prison pals tracked her down in episode six, but she died in episode eight when Officer Dawn overreacted and shot her. To recap, after a six-episode hiatus, TWD brought Beth back just to kill her off for the midseason finale. It felt like a ratings ploy rather than an earned moment of conflict, and also forced us to spend an unnecessarily long amount of time with those boring killjoys at the hospital.
4. That time three different black characters died in one season. Depending on whose storylines get priority each week (and which season you're watching), TWD has one of the more diverse casts on TV. But after running through T-Dog and Oscar in suspiciously quick succession, TWD killed off Tyreese, Noah, and Bob in season five alone, which, no matter what happened in the comics, was not a good look. Executive producer Gale Anne Hurd defended the show by saying that they’ve “killed a lot more white characters than African-American characters,” but that’s hardly an achievement when you start with more white characters and leave more of them alive in the aftermath.
5. The Glenn death fake-out. A lot of TWD viewers who haven’t read the comics are still vaguely familiar with the source material, so many, many fans went into season six knowing that Glenn’s time might be up. When Glenn seemed to get crushed under a random horde of zombies in episode three, nobody really believed that was how he’d die, so the fact that the writers waited 'til episode seven to confirm he was alive was both insulting and completely lacking in suspense.
6. Denise’s death. Denise only appeared in a handful of season six episodes, but quickly became a favorite thanks in large part to actress Merrit Wever’s lovability. Comic readers knew she would die eventually, but later than she did on the show. Instead she got Abraham’s arrow-through-the-eye death, which on the page happened earlier than Denise’s original demise - a fact not lost on fans who wondered why one of the show’s few LGBTQ characters got the boot so soon after her introduction. It didn’t help that Denise’s death aired just a few weeks after a controversial episode of The 100 where - spoiler alert - another lesbian character died right after consummating her relationship with a woman.
7. The Negan cliffhanger at the end of the season six. When Negan finally made his long-teased appearance in the finale, he clubbed someone to death with his baseball bat, then … fade to black and a six-month wait to find out who died. Since most people correctly theorized that he killed Glenn, the wait felt even more like a transparent attempt to make people tune in for the premiere (which they probably would have done anyway). Then when the premiere finally did air, viewers still had to sit through an interminable Rick Grimes vision quest before the episode addressed the cliffhanger. It was even worse than the time everyone had to wait 500 years to find out that Sophia had been in the barn all along.
8. Abraham’s death. After the six-month wait to find out who was on the receiving end of Lucille, the writers attempted a fake-out by having Abraham be the first to die. Because everyone thought Glenn was the victim, Abraham’s death ended up feeling like a relief, which was a mean, cynical thing to do to Abraham, especially because he never really got the proper sendoff he deserved. And then Glenn died anyway!
9. Glenn’s death. Ugh, Glenn’s death. Everyone saw it coming, but it took forever to get there, and when it happened, it was unbelievably gruesome even by TWD standards. Critics also noted the hypocrisy of TWD censoring swear words but allowing Glenn’s bulged-out eyeball to linger on screen. A lot of fans threatened to quit the show over the incident, and some followed through - the (still pretty high) ratings have noticeably declined since the season premiere.
10. That CGI deer. After 6 1/2 seasons of walkers, walker hordes, severed limbs, and every gross way to die you can think of, it’s hard to understand why the TWD staff had such a hard time making an everyday woodland creature look real, but at least it provided a bit of comic relief in a show that is otherwise lacking it. Lord knows what will happen if they ever have to animate a bear.
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