Obligatory spoiler warnings for Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and, more vaguely, The Leftovers.
I have read no less than three posts in the last two weeks complaining about a “new” trend in television, where dead characters no longer stay dead. Has this complaint been triggered by every Ryan Murphy show ever? No. Has this complaint been triggered by Arrow? No. Or Fringe, where a guy was written completely out of existence, and yet managed to come back? Has it been triggered by dozens of dramas over the course of the last several decades where characters have been left for dead — or presumed dead — only to end up surviving?
No.
These complaints have been triggered by three specific possible deaths on three different and very good dramas: The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Leftovers.
Here’s the rub, however: We haven’t seen the outcome in any of those three episodes. We’re not even 100 percent sure that these characters aren’t dead. (Okay, we’re 99 percent sure). We are preemptively complaining before seeing how these potential deaths play out. Maybe the resurrections are not cheap or manipulative. Maybe they make total sense. Maybe we’ll find them satisfying. Maybe we will find them infuriating. The point is: We don’t know yet, because we haven’t seen how these story arcs resolve.
I know that there’s a lot of devil’s magic going on in Game of Thrones. There are dragons, and White Walkers and a woman who shoots smoke monsters out of her vagina. Why wouldn’t it make sense if Jon Snow were brought back from the dead? It’s not exactly out of the ordinary for the show. After all, there’s a whole army of undead.
As for The Walking Dead, Glenn might be alive, but it’s possible, even likely, he won’t be for long, that the show will bring him back only to deliver a bigger gut punch later. This is all a chapter in a bigger storyline that we’re complaining about before we’ve seen it play out.
Finally, on The Leftovers, a character was left for dead in this most recent episode, but no one actually believes that character is dead. No one feels duped because no one really has seriously considered that the character wouldn’t come back. If you’ve been paying attention all season, a resurrection has practically been foreshadowed since the first episode.
In a statement released to Alan Sepinwall, Damon Lindelof even teased that the character is still alive by poking fun at Scott Gimple’s statement about Glenn’s fate on The Talking Dead after Glenn supposedly died:
“You will see [spoiler], or parts of [spoiler], possibly memories of [spoiler], [spoiler’s] jogging pants, Maybe another character named [spoiler], an adolescent game entitled ‘Seven Minutes in [spoiler],’ and/or, but not necessarily literally, the ACTUAL [spoiler], again. And soon. #GlennLives”
Let’s at least give the showrunners of three of the internet’s favorite shows the benefit of the doubt here, and consider the possibility that they know what they’re doing and that they’re not trying to intentionally troll us. There is very little to gain, long-term, by duping viewers. These showrunners are smart enough to know that if they lose our trust, they will lose more viewers.
Here’s the other thing: These fake deaths? They work. Game of Thrones has never been more talked-about than it has since the season finale. We have four or five more months until the series comes back, and it’s still all we can talk about (even though we all know that Jon Snow is coming back).
The Walking Dead, meanwhile, had seen a slight drop-off in overnight ratings through the first two episodes of the season (though it still put up huge numbers once DVRs were accounted for), but the show has rebounded. Live ratings have been up since the third episode of the season, because no one wants to wait until the next night and watch it on their DVRs for fear of being spoiled. Internet headlines are dominated by the “Is Glenn Alive” conversation. This is how you get people to watch live every single week.
As for The Leftovers? Despite an overall excellent season, people are just now finally starting to really talk about this show. It’s rightfully being put into the same category as Fargo, as one of the two best shows airing this fall. This is the kind of conversation that ultimately turns people onto these series.
Ultimately, I’m not saying television shows should overdo it and kill a character and bring him or her back every other week. But I think every series should get one resurrection freebie. The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, after all, have been really good about keeping their dead characters dead. They’re kind of known for that. There’s no real history here of them stringing us along or teasing us with fake deaths. So, let’s at least see how these three series play out before we start decrying a new trend in television.
