‘The Walking Dead’ Might Tread Familiar Territory With One Character’s Rumored Death In The Season Finale

WARNING: Possible spoilers for the finale of The Walking Dead below, though the circumstances may have been seen before in other shows or comics.

The Walking Dead will air its season seven finale tonight and promises to not infuriate fans like season six’s finale managed to do. That was due to a cliffhanger, though, and there’s a still a chance that the creators behind the show could make people angry thanks to the actions we will get to see tonight.

The finale is titled “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life” and has been teased as the closing of a chapter and the opening for the next 100 episodes of the show — that tease coming at the same Paleyfest tease where Andrew Lincoln shared his dream death with the crowd. He won’t be in any danger tonight, but several characters could be. It’s almost a guarantee that someone will be dying tonight, but the speculation seems to single out one person in particular.

Sasha seems to be the main choice for “goner” on tonight’s finale. Sonequa Martin-Green has taken the job on Star Trek: Discovery — though she can apparently balance both shows and the stomach flu — and coupled with her current living situation on the show, it seems like she’s the most likely candidate. But how will it happen if it happens?

Well, the preview above seems to indicate some sort of showdown at the gate between Negan and Rick’s crews — with an appearance by King Ezekiel — and that might mean a prisoner exchange of sorts. It’s how things go down in the comic, though with Holly instead of Sasha, and she’s already dead once her prisoner hood has been removed. The problem with this scenario is that The Walking Dead has used it before in other formats. Not only did it appear in the Michonne spin-off to the Telltale game series, but they adapted that for the midseason finale of Fear The Walking Dead in 2016.

Then TV Guide mined the depths of Reddit to find this theory, putting a spin on the comic scene and likely changing the dynamic of the scene a bit:

Negan fully intends to turn Sasha over alive, but Sasha has already taken a suicide pill. The Saviors don’t know she’s done this, and she didn’t know she was going to be returned safely. She dies on the way, likely with a bag over her head. The Saviors then release her. When the hood gets taken off, she bites someone — most likely Eric (Jordan Woods-Robinson), Aaron’s (Ross Marquand) boyfriend. Eric got some character development last week, which is a death sentence for a peripheral character. The Alexandrians think turning over Sasha dead was Negan’s plan all along, and they start shooting. It’s possible that Negan was planning to turn over Sasha in exchange for the guns he found out Alexandria had, though them having the guns at all is against the rules and it’s unlikely Negan would be willing to negotiate about it.

Now as the folks in the thread point out, the intention to fight Negan and The Saviors is already there. So any sort of trickery or tragic death isn’t going to light things off more than they already are. But it does make the demise of the character a bit more interesting. And then toss in the fact that she bites and kills Daryl, straight out with no fanfare. Whew. Way to go, Walking Dead. You’ve won me back.

(Via TV Guide / Reddit)