As The Walking Dead ramps up the tension in the final episodes of Season 7, we’re bracing ourselves for major deaths.
We hate to see our favourite characters leave the show – especially if they meet a grisly end. But with anyone liable to cark it at any time, it’s good to be prepared. And that includes the cast, who seem more embracing of their characters dying than the rest of us.
We asked the cast of The Walking Dead how they’d like to see their characters die in the show. Norman Reedus, Josh McDermitt, Tom Payne, Austin Amelio, Seth Gilliam, Alanna Masterson and Ross Marquand – who play Daryl, Eugene, Jesus, Dwight, Father Gabriel, Tara and Aaron respectively – shared their thoughts on how they’d like to see their characters bow out.
“I would like to just walk away and go up a mountain, and then a little dog jumps out of the woods and follows me up and over the mountain. And there’s a sunset, and people just go: ‘Whatever happened to that guy?’ Like The Outlaw Josey Wales; like a Clint Eastwood movie,” says Norman Reedus.
As for Josh McDermitt, he wants Eugene to go out a hero. “We’ve certainly seen some moments that Eugene has had in the past where he’s stepped up to help others,” says McDermitt. “I think Rosita having the bullets and trying to shoot Negan, that certainly was a situation that went haywire. But Eugene did a heroic thing, stepping up and saying: ‘I’m the one who made the bullet’. He could have died right there in that moment and he would have gone out as a hero.”
He adds, “But honestly, with a character like Eugene, we don’t know how he would die. He might just go out by choking on a sandwich.”
Dwight’s Last Words
Austin Amelio, who plays Dwight, meanwhile, aspires to the death of one of the show’s most popular characters: “Michael Cudlitz had a pretty epic death. He had his last piece before he died. I don’t know what that would entail but something along the lines of that would be nice.” Cudlitz’s character Abraham met a sticky finish at the business end of Lucille but memorably got to sign out with the line: “Suck my nuts”.
And Ross Marquand idea for Aaron? “Alien zombies”. Interesting, since show creator Robert Kirkman’s original pitch of The Walking Dead featured exactly that. Kirkman has since claimed that he just added that in as a way of securing the green light for his project, and never had any intention of actually following through on the alien theme.
See Father Gabriel’s uncharacteristically violent response and discover what else they had to say when you watch the video above.
