AMCDon't cry for Sonequa Martin-Green. This is your obvious spoiler warning.
The Walking Dead actress said goodbye to the world of zombies, barbed wire bats and endless dirt in the season seven finale when her character, Sasha, killed herself. After agreeing to help Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) ambush Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and her friends in Alexandria, Sasha takes a pill provided by Eugene (Josh McDermitt) and dies en route in a coffin and attacked Negan when he revealed her in Alexandria. Zombie Sasha was eventually found by Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Jesus (Tom Payne) and put down by Maggie.
"It just felt so right," Martin-Green said on Talking Dead. "It felt so complete. It was quite poetic when I found out how it was going to happen. Because I felt like it was the perfect end to my story, the perfect culmination of my life. I felt like all of my roads had led to that moment of getting to that place of complete selflessness. It felt perfect."
Martin-Green was struck by how her character became the weapon she wanted, she used herself to save her friends for a final time.
"In this beautiful way, it was the first time we had ever rooted for a walker. Also, it was beautiful because the way I saw it, that warrior spirit lives on. That even in death, I was still going to fight, because I had realized my purpose. It had been revealed to me," she told host Chris Hardwick. "Everything before that had been self-preservation, self-defense mechanisms, basically self-obsession. And over the course of my life as Sasha, it was progressing beyond that to the point that I said, ‘OK, I now have a greater purpose that is much bigger than me, that's for the future, and I'm going to do it even in death.'"
Martin-Green is off to star in Star Trek: Discovery as the franchise's first female lead of color.
As for what's next with The Walking Dead when the series returns for season eight in the fall, showrunner Scott M. Gimple had this to say:
"Every year you ask me that question," Gimple said. "I say it's going to be bigger, it's going to be more intense. I say these things and I've meant them every year and I think we've actually accomplished that. This year, same thing: More intense. The first four episodes will melt people's minds and break their televisions."