All photos courtesy of The Walking Dead.
It can’t be easy writing for The Walking Dead, the most-watched program on cable television now in its sixth season. Even hint that a favorite character is about to be bumped off and fans will deluge your Twitter feed with death threats. Nevertheless, the fact is that in a post-apocalyptic world populated by the walking dead (called “walkers,” never “zombies,” as per the comic books the show is based on) and a relative handful of humans, people die. A lot. So heading into the Season 6 finale this Sunday night on AMC (check your listings), fans everywhere, including myself, are biting our fingernails wondering who’s going to die.
The conflict that has dominated this season is this: Can what’s left of humanity coexist in this bleak landscape without resorting to killing one another? For the main characters who form the group the show centers on, the answer has been no, with one exception. How each character has dealt with the situation varies widely, from those who kill their fellow human beings first and ask questions later to those who will only kill as a last resort in self defense. How far each of these characters has crossed their own pre-existing moral boundaries will no doubt greatly determine who survives to see a seventh season.
I’m no expert on The Walking Dead. I didn’t start watching till the third season. Thanks to the marathons AMC runs two or three times a year, I’ve seen every episode at least three times, but I’m still behind the curve compared to the show’s more obsessive-compulsive fans, who constantly pontificate their theories on the Internet. I’ve never read the comic books, and although the show doesn’t follow them exactly, many longtime fans find them useful for helping determine who lives and who dies. This report will focus on only the six main characters, since they’re the ones whose lives we care about the most.
I’ve mostly stayed off the Internet and used my own knowledge of the program to calculate the odds of survival for each character. Readers are encouraged to submit their own thoughts on this vitally important topic in the comment section below. Before I begin, a spoiler alert: If you haven’t watched this season’s penultimate episode, stop reading now.
Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) hasn’t asked any questions this season.
Rick Grimes
Back when Season 1 began, Rick Grimes was just your average, ordinary deputy sheriff issuing traffic tickets to reckless hillbilly tweakers in Atlanta. Once the apocalypse hit, he reluctantly became the leader of a ragtag band of survivors and was forced to kill his best friend, who slept with his wife and challenged what’s become known as the “ricktatorship.” It’s been a long, bloody, slippery slope for Rick ever since, and in Season 6, he’s gone full-psychopath. Look even slightly askance at Rick, and he’ll blow your head off with his Colt Python or stab you in the head or the neck with a hunting knife. In the finale, Rick is headed with a showdown with the infamous but so-far-unseen Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), one of the comic book’s most fearsome and formidable villains. Negan is head of a lethal gang known as the Saviors and his weapon-of-choice is a baseball bat wrapped with barbed wire named “Lucille.” Will he take Lucille to Rick’s head? Unlikely. Rick doesn’t die in the comic books and it’s almost impossible to imagine The Walking Dead without him. Although the show’s cast and producers are promising the darkest series finale yet and some Internet prognosticators are predicting his death, I predict the chance of Rick dying is 10 percent.
Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), everyone’s favorite character.
Daryl Dixon
Daryl Dixon is arguably The Walking Dead’s most popular character and attempts to bump him off in the past resulted in the aforementioned death threats to the show’s writers. Daryl, who isn’t in the comic books, has evolved from the type of sketcher deputy Rick Grimes formerly harassed into the show’s most fully realized character, a strong, silent man who is reluctant to both kill humans or enter new relationships with them. Daryl’s weapon-of-choice is the crossbow and he rides a motorcycle, both of which were taken from him earlier this season by Dwight (Austin Amelio), a member of Negan’s gang. After a recent showdown on the railroad tracks, Daryl retrieved the crossbow and motorcycle from Dwight and it seemed like happy days again. However, that showdown was the result of Daryl ignoring his usually flawless intuition and deferring to the women on the search party because sexism. In the penultimate episode, Dwight sneaked up behind Daryl in the woods, pointed a gun at his back, the screen faded to black, then a gunshot was heard and an explosion of blood splattered the screen. I want to believe that a member of the group, possibly the altruist but stealthy zen master Morgan Jones (Lennie James), crept up behind Dwight and blew the sneer right off his face. Yet since Daryl is my favorite character, it’d be just like those writers to piss me off. The chance that Daryl dies in the finale is 55 percent.
Michonne (Danai Guirira) is also handy with glass shards.
Michonne
Michonne is hands down my favorite female character on The Walking Dead. In the beginning, she hacked the hands off two walkers (former friends who turned), chained them up like guard dogs and wandered the wasteland with impunity—their smell covered up her own scent and warded off the other walkers. The group thought that was a little weird but came to respect and rely upon her sword-wielding skill, since one of the best ways to kill a walker without attracting attention is to slice its brain in half. Michonne will kill humans when necessary. When the evil Governor (David Morrissey) kidnapped her best friend, she snuffed the Governor’s walker-daughter and stabbed the governor in the eye with a piece of broken aquarium glass. No one cuts through a herd of walkers with more efficiency than Michonne, but her number may be up due to what I term “Little Joe Syndrome.” If you recall, Little Joe (the late Michael Landon) was a character on Bonanza, and every time he hooked up with a girl, she inevitably died from some horrible disease or an Indian attack before the end of the season. After five seasons going it alone, Michonne has hooked up with of all people known psychopath Rick Grimes. The Walking Dead has a long history of killing off black characters and it’s been a while. In the penultimate episode she was captured by Negan’s gang. I can already see Negan beating her to death with Lucille right in front of new-squeeze Rick. In her favor, it appears she lives in the comic books. The chance Michonne dies in the finale is 40 percent.
Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) is a goner.
Glenn Rhee
Next to Daryl, Glenn might be The Walking Dead’s most popular character, especially with the ladies. Fans threw a collective hissy fit earlier this year, when the mid-season cliffhanger suggested Glenn had been cornered, bitten and turned by a herd of walkers. As we learned, Glenn avoided death by hiding underneath a Dumpster. But on The Talking Dead—the live program that immediately follows each new episode and discusses what just happened—Glenn appeared in a video segment with co-executive producer Greg Nicotero and looked none too certain about still being alive. I suspected right then and there that Glenn wouldn’t make it to the seventh season. Glenn dies in the comic books and he may also be a victim of reverse Little Joe Syndrome, since he’s married to another main character, Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohen), and they’re expecting a child. Highly moralistic, Glenn had refrained from killing humans the entire series until the second-to-last episode this season, when the group preemptively attacked Negan’s stronghold and Glenn machine-gunned a slew of Saviors and stabbed one dude to death in is his sleep. In the penultimate episode, Glen is gagged and tied to a tree along with Michonne after being captured by the Saviors. The wily and ruthless Michonne may escape from this jam, but goodie-two-shoes Glenn is a goner. The chance Glenn dies in the finale is 100 percent.
Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohen) is having labor pains.
Maggie Greene
As mentioned above, Maggie Greene is married to Glenn and they are expecting a child. In fact, Maggie began experiencing premature labor pains during the penultimate episode, which is bound to take her out of the action during the finale, even though she’s highly pragmatic and will kill people when necessary. Maggie will no doubt make her way from Alexandria, the walled fortress where the group is currently holed up, to Hilltop, the nearby walled fortress whose peaceful inhabitants have rediscovered the lost arts of farming and tool-making. In the comics, Maggie apparently becomes the leader of Hilltop. Pregnant Maggie foolishly participated in the raid on the Savior’s compound and came within a hair’s breadth of having her womb sliced open by one of Negan’s henchwomen. As sadistic as the show’s writers are, no way will they attempt that stunt again. If Maggie has a premature baby, it will be a boy named Hershel, after her father, who got his head cut off by the Governor. The chance Maggie dies in the finale is zero.
Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) always has something cooking up her sleeve.
Carol Peletier
In the series and the comic books, Carol enters the apocalypse as a mousey housewife who has been severely abused by men her entire life. Her only child gets infected and Carol kills her daughter rather than let her become a walker. Comic book Carol never seems to overcome her meekness and eventually commits suicide-by-walker. Cable TV Carol is an entirely different animal. Empowered by the carnage around her, she’s more likely than anyone besides Rick Grimes to kill someone for looking at her sideways. Back when they were holed up in prison, Carol killed and burnt the bodies of two people just for having the flu. Rick Grimes banished crazy Carol from the prison. Later on, Carol killed a grade-schooler whom she suspected of being a sociopath. “Look at the flowers,” she said just before blowing the kid’s brains out. Carol occasionally revisits her homemaker past by baking cookies for the crew, but you’re never quite sure if they might be poisoned. Carol and Daryl had a minor fling before she got booted from the prison. They’ve never hooked up again, but in the penultimate episode, Carol leaves Alexandria, claiming she can’t kill humans anymore, and Daryl once again ignores his well-honed instincts (he may still be burning a candle for her) and takes off in hot pursuit on his motorcycle. Daryl ends up in the woods with Dwight’s gun at his back while Carol’s whereabouts are unknown. Morgan is searching for her, and it’s possible that he’ll find her and they’ll attempt to rescue Daryl. Maybe she’ll even die in the attempt, but I doubt it. She’s unstoppable. The chance of Carol dying in the season finale is 20 percent.
Other Potential Deaths
Besides the six main characters listed above, there are plenty of other characters that may not live to see the seventh season. Morgan, who has already been mentioned several times, will probably survive, but he may finally bite the bullet and kill a human being. If Morgan and Michonne live, there’s a good chance that either pastor Gabriel Stokes (Seth Gilliam) or Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) or both might die, to satisfy the writers’ long unfulfilled penchant for killing black characters. Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz) the mercenary ginger who’s been toying with suicide all season, would be totally down with dying in battle. Honestly, I hope everybody lives, but that’s just not going to happen. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
