In tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead, “East,” showrunner Scott Gimple (along with co-writer Channing Powell) did what The Walking Dead loves to do most: Torture its viewers. The episode ended with Michonne and Glenn captured by the Saviors and tied up. When Rosita and Daryl attempted to rescue them, Dwight walked up behind Daryl and … shot him.
If you watch the scene a few times, however, it’s clear that it’s not a kill shot. Not only does Dwight say, “You’ll be alright” after the scene fades to black, but the shot clearly hits Daryl below the head and in the shoulder, causing the blood to splatter all over the camera.
It’s a quick jolt of terror soon followed by the realization that Daryl will survive to live another day. In fact, he’ll almost certainly survive long enough to meet Negan.
Will Negan kill him?
We actually have a fairly good guess as to whom Negan will kill in next week’s season finale.
— Will it be Daryl, who blames himself for Denise’s death? There’s plenty of evidence to suggest it. But, no. The shoulder shot probably saves Daryl from Negan’s baseball bat.
— Will it be Michonne, who is tied up along with Glenn? It’d be a real heartbreaker to lose her right after she and Rick started hooking up. But it won’t be her, either.
— Will it be Maggie, who had Enid cut her hair, and who seems to have suffered a miscarriage? No, it won’t be her, either. Negan probably wouldn’t kill a woman (according to The Walking Dead urban legend), and Gimple probably wouldn’t compound the misery of a miscarriage with death (that kind of ending is fit for only one character: Lori Grimes).
— Will it be Glenn, who has been delivering a lot of foreboding lines lately, and who Robert Kirkman suggested it would be last year? No, it won’t be Glenn, either.
Glenn moral compass binging…Which means he dying soon #TheWalkingDead
— Khonshu's Grandson 🌕 (@KastroKalikoe) March 28, 2016
— Will it be Morgan? Carol? Rosita? Tara or Heath?
Nope. None of them, either.
In all likelihood, Negan is probably going to kill the patience of viewers. Why? Because after 16 episodes that have seemingly been building toward the introduction of Negan — whose casting was announced last November — and after a 90-minute season finale, it seems very possible that Negan won’t kill anyone … yet.
That’s right. It’s going to end on a cliffhanger.
In an interview with Lauren Cohan on the Batman vs. Superman red carpet last week, Entertainment Tonight asked the woman who plays Maggie what to expect in the finale.
Here’s what she had to say:
“It’s the biggest finale I’ve ever seen in television. In any episode of TV, maybe barring the last episode of the Sopranos, but that’s a different kind of fish.”
Interesting that she’d bring up The Sopranos, which famously went to black and ended ambiguously, because the next thing Cohan said was that The Walking Dead had “the cliff-hangeriest episode” ever.”
In other words, the most likely scenario is that Negan will narrow his choices down to a few potential victims, raise his bat to bash in a head, and the episode will cut to black before he lowers Lucille. That’s the only way the episode qualifies as “cliff=hangeriest episode ever.”
We may have to wait another seven months to find out who Negan kills.
Damn you, The Walking Dead.
(via Entertainment Tonight)
