SPOILERS through this week’s The Walking Dead episode, “Some Guy”
This week’s episode of The Walking Dead forces a reconfiguring of the saddest deaths in The Walking Dead’s eight-year history. I’ll say right up front, however, that the deaths of Glenn and Abraham are not on this list. Those deaths were not “sad” as much as they were brutal and unrelenting. Negan smashed Glenn’s head in with a baseball bat so many times that viewers could feel little other than numbness. The biggest death in the history of The Walking Dead did not provoke sadness as much as it provoked a sense of hollowness. In fact, the first time Glenn “died” next to a dumpster was actually more “sad” than Glenn’s actual death.
Here, however, were the five deaths on The Walking Dead most likely to elicit honest-to-God tears.
5. Beth — Beth’s death happened so fast — she stabbed Dawn with a tiny pair of scissors and Dawn shot her in the head — that it took a few seconds to register what had happened. Beth’s death left Rick, Tyreese, Carol, and especially Daryl completely shook, but the sadness was multiplied by 10 when Maggie broke down at the sight of her little sister’s body being carried out of the hospital by Daryl.
4. Noah — For my money, the death of Noah still remains the most traumatic of the series. Nicholas the Coward opened up a revolving door to escape, leaving the zombies to feast on poor Noah as Glenn had to watch on helplessly, separated by only a pane of glass. Noah may be the last sweet person on the show, and it broke our hearts to see him succumb. I daresay that the heart of The Walking Dead hasn’t been the same since Noah and Glenn’s deaths.
3. Shiva
I know she’s just a tiger, and I also know that she’s a CGI creation, but to lose any pet is horrible. To lose a pet whose life Ezekiel once saved is heartbreaking. To lose a majestic beast to a zombie horde because that tiger was more loyal to Ezekiel than to its own life? That’s just devastating. Carol, Ezekiel, and Jerry could do little else but look on in horror, like those of us in the television viewing audience.
2. Mika and Lizzie — “I love you, Lizzie,” Carol said to a 12-year-old who had just killed her sister for no other reason than because she was mentally ill. “Everything works out the way it’s supposed to. Just … just look at the flowers,” Carol said, raising her pistol and killing the closest thing she had to a daughter since the death of Sophia. It wasn’t that Carol wanted to kill Lizzie. It’s that she had to. Lizzie had killed Mika. She was a danger to Judith. She was a danger to everyone else. The Walking Dead is a show that pulls no punches (see, e.g., Glenn’s death), but the death of a teenager was too much even for this show. It may be the only major death on The Walking Dead that happened offscreen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7g6NLgqC5M
1. Sophia — The death of Sophia was a game changer for The Walking Dead. It transformed the series from a show about zombies to a drama with real human emotion. Sophia’s death was The Walking Dead’s Ned Stark moment: Rick had to put down a little girl, but not just any little girl. Sophia was Carol’s daughter. She was Carl’s friend. She was who everyone had spent days searching for. It was so traumatizing, Rick could barely bring himself to pull the trigger. In terms of pure sadness, it’s a moment that may never be topped again on The Walking Dead.
