--- description: Warning: Spoilers ahead title: What Tonight's 'Walking Dead' Means for Television image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4248a6c5afc46427/6988725c428a9e4d2acd03d9/twd_603_gp_0529_0021.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # What Tonight's _Walking Dead_ Means for Television  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 23, 2015 3:02 AM CUT  Steven Yeun as Glenn Rhee in The Walking Dead, season 6, episode 3. Steven Yeun as Glenn Rhee in The Walking Dead, season 6, episode 3.Gene Page/AMC Film Holdings LLC.  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Nov 23, 2015 3:02 AM CUT Tonight’s installment of _The Walking Dead_, AMC’s zombie series that’s spawned both a spinoff and endless online chatter, settled a question that had been opened four weeks ago as to whether or not Glenn (Steven Yeun) was alive or dead. He scrapped his way away from the zombies threatening him; the viscera we saw wasn’t his. But “settled” is a relative term. Death, long the province of artists looking to make a point about mortality or simply to shake up projects that risked going torpid, no longer seems like, well, a death sentence. Witness the fan speculation around the fate of Jon Snow — stabbed, apparently fatally, at the end of the most recent season of _Game of Thrones_. Whether or not Snow will return to the series despite having been chopped into Caesar salad has been the subject of increasingly heated fan speculation in the months since _Thrones_ left the air. Of course, _The Walking Dead_ and _Game of Thrones_ exist within the context of pre-existing work; the series are adapted from, respectively, a comic book series and a cycle of novels whose facts, or whose supernatural rules governing what does and does not constitute “death,” exist in knowledgeable fans’ minds outside of the shows’ own universes. Still, moments like Glenn’s revival make it to feel as though television is keeping up with other media in seriousness of purpose. It wasn’t ever thus: When characters died on _Mad Men_, they stayed dead. (Poor Lane Pryce!) And earlier in recent TV history, HBO had an entire series about human mortality; Nate’s death on _Six Feet Under_, robbing the show of its notional central character, wasn’t reversed in order to bring fans a smile or to engender blog posts like this one. (Though, in tepid fairness, he did come back as a ghost.) It gave rise, like deaths on TV from _Sesame Street_’s Mr. Hooper to _The Sopranos_’s Adriana La Cerva, to complications; it catalyzed real human emotions within the show that couldn’t be shrugged off. (Notably, HBO’s current series about mourning unimaginable tragedy, _The Leftovers_, is viewed by a fraction of the people that tune into _The Walking Dead_, and is a far more difficult sit.) But, for all that they exist within the world of prestige cable — whatever that means to the viewer — _Game of Thrones_ and _The Walking Dead_ are of a different breed. They’re at once aspiring to art and commerce, and that means providing a healthy dose of fan service. Glenn escaping seemingly certain death by, basically, crawling away seemed particularly chintzy. Peril is, of course, a central element of television — if it weren’t, _Homeland_ would by now be about a Bethesda-area woman who always remembered to take her meds. But death is, or should be, different. Contrast this to the world of even the most commercial films. In the most recent, and final, installment of _The Hunger Games_ series, the number-one film at the box office this weekend, Katniss’s sister Prim is killed. Prim wasn’t a minor character, but her death has meaning; it defines what happens going forward. But that film series had a set ending (indeed, it ends when the credits roll in theaters right now). It isn’t fun to see Katniss mourn Prim. But there’s a point of view there other than “gotcha!” _The Walking Dead_ does not, and could potentially spin its wheels for years to come. Having played the “fake death” card once, the series can’t, really, again — but it’s hard not to see how, with all the attention the series garnered from one fake-out, they wouldn’t be tempted. Death-defying acts are addictive, even if they sap the audience’s trust little by little. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4123840/the-walking-dead-recap/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4123840/the-walking-dead-recap/"},"headline":"What Tonight's Walking Dead Means for Television","datePublished":"2015-11-23T03:02:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T12:50:12.233Z","description":"Warning: Spoilers ahead","url":"https://time.com/4123840/the-walking-dead-recap/","keywords":["Television","game of thrones","The Walking Dead"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4248a6c5afc46427/6988725c428a9e4d2acd03d9/twd_603_gp_0529_0021.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4248a6c5afc46427/6988725c428a9e4d2acd03d9/twd_603_gp_0529_0021.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TWD_603_GP_0529_0021","caption":"Steven Yeun as Glenn Rhee - The Walking Dead _ Season 6, Episode 3 - Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC","creditText":"Gene Page/AMC Film Holdings LLC.","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4123840/the-walking-dead-recap/","name":"What Tonight's Walking Dead Means for Television"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The16 Most Shocking TV Deaths","description":"Spoler alert: everybody dies.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/60EV5eCA/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-03-26T22:43:49.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/60EV5eCA.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4123840/the-walking-dead-recap/","duration":"PT2M12S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4123840/the-walking-dead-recap/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```