Steven Yeun on Glenn's Walking Dead Fate: 'Don’t Give That to Anybody Else'

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Walking Dead.

The season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead shocked fans Sunday night when Negan killed off not one, but two beloved Alexandrians. First Abraham and then — following an unfortunate outburst from Daryl — original group member Glenn.

The gruesome scene was not entirely unexpected, as Glenn also died at the hands of Negan and his razor wire-wrapped bat Lucille in the Walking Dead comic books. However, watching the brutal beatdown play out on TV brought a whole new level of horror to the sequence.

But as it turns out, Steven Yeun — who played the pizza delivery boy turned zombie slayer — wouldn’t have had it any other way. During a live interview on Talking Dead following the episode, the 32-year-old actor revealed he was all for Glenn being Negan’s victim, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Personally for me, I think the death in the comic, Robert [Kirkman] wrote such a messed up but at the same time incredible way to take something away — to make a story as impactful as it is. You read that comic, you kind of don’t want that to go to anyone else. It’s such an iconic moment and I think I even said, ‘Don’t give that to anybody else.’ It’s such a gnarly thing to say but sincerely, living that out was very wild but at the same time, that moment happening and being realized on television in a different medium and to do it in the way that we did it I think is brave and at the same time super affecting. And for me, that was the motivation to be like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’

After taking an extremely hard hit from Lucille, Glenn still managed to utter a final message to his pregnant wife — “Maggie, I’ll find you” — before Negan finished the job, an ending that Yeun felt was extremely fitting for his character.

I think Glenn died in a very Glenn way. Still not thinking about himself. It’s appropriate that he ends there, and it’s also appropriate that he kind of puts those last words out there as a final, ‘Look out for each other.’

Read more at EW.com.

 

Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.