Like many other fans of television, I spent the hours after last night's Walking Dead curled up in a ball, rocking back and worth and whispering "whyyyyyy" into the void.
Or at least that's what I was doing in my head while I scanned Twitter, rewatched the scene a few times, watched Talking Dead, and made some desperate reaches for even the most questionable narrative explanations for how maybe, just maybe, Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) might not be dead. (Admit it: you didn't know his last name til now, either.)
Based on the evidence, I might not actually have to do much reaching, because it doesn't look like he's really dead after all. Despite the fact that when we last saw Glenn, he was laying on the ground as walkers ripped out somebody's intestines, it's more than likely that he will survive, and now, I don't want him to.
In case you missed the internet's epic meltdown last night, The Walking Dead might have killed off one of its biggest characters in a pretty gruesome fashion. After watching his frenemy, Nicholas, shoot himself in the head, Glenn was knocked off the dumpster upon which he was taking refuge into a crowd of hungry walkers. Someone had their intestines immediately ripped out of their body, but based on the way it was shot, those intestines might have actually belonged to Nicholas, whose body fell on top of Glenn's, and thus the speculation that Glenn might have actually survived.
Now, I don't think of myself as a morbid person. I ain't no Hester Ulrich (Lea Michele's Scream Queens character also has a last name!). I have no quirky death obsession. I'm terrified of death, and terrified of losing someone I love to that unknown but inevitable reality of human existence, but on TV, I say bring it the hell on.
Homeland killing Brody (Damien Lewis)? Loved it. Teen Wolf killing Allison (Crystal Reed)? Loved it. Grey's Anatomy killing Derek (Patrick Dempsey)? Didn't love it, but liked the daring nature of it. I wasn't even a Good Wife fan when Will (Josh Charles) died, and I was obsessed with that storyline. Grief is interesting, as is surprise.
I love it when shows kill off major characters, and I especially love it when no one saw it coming. It's a combo of the surprise element and the fact that it's a way to live the real life horror of a fact that anyone could die at any time without actually living it. We get to have real emotions with none of the real-life consequences, like a harmless virtual reality game.
Here's what I don't love, however. I become totally infuriated when a show puts a main character in extreme danger—or even actually kills them—but then just an episode or two later, they're fine. They made a miraculous recovery! They were resurrected! They were never actually in extreme danger, despite how it looked!
It's just emotional manipulation, and it's mean. It also changes how I watch that show in the future. It's hard to care about anyone dying on The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, or Arrow, because people die all the time on those shows and it never sticks. Most people on The Vampire Diaries are dead already, so it's hard to be emotionally affected by something that most likely does not matter.
Castle's season three finale was one of the most incredible episodes of TV I had seen at that point (give me a break, it was 2011), because not only did we learn that Captain Montgomery had been somewhat of a dirty cop, but Beckett (Stana Katic) was shot right in the heart as she spoke at his funeral.
I analyzed that final scene over and over. There was clearly blood, so she wasn't wearing a vest, and that bullet was really close to her heart. As much as I loved Castle and Beckett and was delighted to hear him finally declare his love for her, I was excited by the idea that she might actually die, because that was interesting to me. That was daring, and that was unexpected. I envisioned one last glorious season of the show that would follow Castle's (Nathan Fillion) attempts to avenge Kate's death. Or at the very least, I thought maybe we'd spend a few episodes with Kate's life hanging in the balance.
That was not what we ended up getting. The season four premiere spent a few minutes in the hospital, but Kate was quickly saved before we flashed forward to her return to work. She had a big scar and was quite traumatized, but we still spent a lot less time dealing with that major near-death experience than I thought we would. I felt cheated, and manipulated, and really just annoyed.
Similarly, season three of Scandal ended one episode with nearly everyone convinced that Jake (Scott Foley) was totally dead. He had been stabbed multiple times, and even though most people were pretty sure that Scandal wouldn't actually kill Jake, he looked pretty darn deceased.
People involved with the show even taunted fans on Twitter, with Scott Foley making vague references to having enjoyed spending Thursday nights with us and saying other generic things that an actor whose character had just been killed off might say.
Then, surprise! As of the next episode, he was totally fine. Sure, he got stabbed, but apparently none of his approximately seventeen stab wounds were fatal, despite the fact that they came from a trained killer. We were happy to see that Jake was still alive, but real unhappy at how many people had gone out of their way to try and trick us.
Right now, we're waiting to find out the fate of two major characters on two major TV shows. Glenn, of course, is the first, and then there's Game of Thrones' Jon Snow (Kit Harington).
While Glenn is actually quite deceased in the Walking Dead comics, Jon's literary future is less certain, since George R.R. Martin has yet to finish the next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. On the show, he looked pretty dead. Kit Harington has claimed that he is dead. HBO's president has told us that Jon Snow is dead. Dead, dead, dead, Jon Snow is dead.
And yet, there's a whole pile of evidence pointing to the contrary, or at least to a quick resurrection, and a whole lot of people who don't believe it's possible, since Jon Snow is one of the most beloved characters on the show. The sentiment is similar with Glenn, and that's exactly why they should both die.
Drama has to have stakes. Otherwise, what's the point of our emotional investment? Why should we care about these characters if the world of the show isn't even going to take their mortality seriously?
If any of the less central characters had been in Glenn's position, we would not have hesitated to declare them dead. Characters die all the time on The Walking Dead, but not the main characters. The main characters are protected by our love for them, apparently. The walkers are like Voldemort in the fact that they are repelled by human love.
Similarly, characters die on Game of Thrones all the time, but even on a show that killed Ned Stark (Sean Bean) after barely a season, we refuse to believe or accept the idea of the death of another main character.
Arrow's season four premiere teased a big death at some point this season, and executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle promised it would actually stick this time, unlike the deaths of Thea (Willa Holland) and Sara (Caity Lotz), because they "want to bring stakes back to the show."
The show has sort of lost its stakes. While the characters had become increasingly broody, as an audience member, it was harder to care. We barely batted an eye when Ra's al Ghul shish kabob'd Thea on his sword last season, because duh, Oliver's little sister was not going to die.
She did die, but she came right back, and we continued to hardly pay attention as the "side effects" of her resurrection began to take hold. She was never going to actually stay dead, so any consequence of her not staying dead was just par for the course.
Guggenheim explained that they would be finding a way to get rid of that magical Lazarus Pit, and this week, that's exactly what they did—right after they used it one final time to bring back Sara Lance, whose death was originally a really big deal.
This new death will apparently also be a big deal, and it will remain a big deal.
"We want it to have resonance," Mericle explained. "If it doesn't mean something to the characters, it won't mean anything to the audience either."
Even with the producers making big promises, it's hard to believe that this death is anything to worry about. It's not that we don't trust them, or that we don't love the show. It's just that character death has hardly been a concern for us in the world of Arrow and its sister show, The Flash.
Did anyone think for one second that Cisco (Carlos Valdes) would remain dead after Wells killed him last season? Nope, and nobody believed Ronnie's death either, mostly due to the fact that he's due to show up in the next spin-off.
Meanwhile, over on The Vampire Diaries, death is basically a big joke. Everybody's dying all the time, and everybody's always coming back because they've got a magic ring or a fancy rock or a magical friend or, ya know, they're already a vampire.
Even on a supernatural show (and don't even get me started on the actual Supernatural), death's gotta mean something. Otherwise, who cares what new big bad is threatening the lives of an entire town?
In the real world, we spend the majority of our time trying to not die, or trying to make it look like we're not as close to death as we actually are. It's our biggest concern as human beings, so TV shows need to stop using it to make us care for an hour, only to flip the switch on us a few minutes later with a big "Just kidding!"
Relief may feel great in the moment, but grief is way more interesting and eventually rewarding than feeling like an emotionally manipulated fool, especially when no one has actually died.
So here's a hopeful RIP to Glenn and Jon, even while I'm pretty sure my morbid hopes are destined to be dashed.