Glenn does die in the first episode of season seven of The Walking Dead, as Negan beats him to death.
The premiere of the show’s seventh season brought in more viewers than The Walking Dead had had in a long time.
This was likely due to viewers’ expectancy that Negan would do something shocking, and he did. In the first episode of the season, Negan established his dominance over Rick’s group by killing Abraham and Glenn.
The Walking Dead season 7
By the time that the seventh season of The Walking Dead premiered on AMC in 2016, fans were both excited and wary to see what would happen with Negan’s quest for power in this season.
Although The Walking Dead’s viewership had declined slightly after the successful “No Sanctuary” episode in season five, the season seven premiere brought in a whopping 17 million viewers.
This earned the series the number one spot as the most watched broadcast of the night.
Does Glenn die in The Walking Dead?
With so many people tuning in to watch, season seven of The Walking Dead certainly had to deliver on the intriguing storylines and bloody fights that fans had come to expect from the show.
Fortunately, the first episode of the season, titled “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be”, which aired on 23 October 2016, definitely delivered in this regard.
While most The Walking Dead fans tuned in to this premiere to see who Negan had killed with his bat, “Lucille”, the episode delivered far more than that.
To everyone’s shock, two beloved characters died in this first episode. The opening shots from this episode show Rick with blood splashed across his face.
The episode then quickly devolves into a twisted road trip with Rick and Negan as the show draws out revealing which of Rick’s friends Negan ended up killing.
From the way that the story plays out in the comics, most fans were convinced that either Abraham or Glenn would be the ones killed, but the truth was not revealed until later on in the episode.
When the episode finally flashes back to the scene where Rick and his friends are lined up in front of Negan on their knees, it is finally revealed that Negan chose Abraham to be killed.
However, to everyone’s shock, Negan then turns around and brutally beats Glenn after Daryl strikes Negan in a fit of rage after witnessing Abraham’s death moments before.
Glenn’s death in this scene is awful to watch, but not quite unexpected after his close brush with death in the previous season, and it definitely helped Negan to establish his dominance.
Why was Glenn’s death not that surprising?
While Glenn’s death was absolutely horrible to watch and he ended up dying a slow and torturous death, many fans did not feel quite as devastated as they expected to by the sight of him being brutally beaten to death.
Part of the reason for this is because fans of the comics already knew that Glenn would end up dying anyway.
The other reason is because many fans already thought that Glenn would die in the previous season when he was trapped in a dumpster with a hoard of zombies, thus, they had already made their peace with the character’s death.
How did Glenn die in the comic book?
The Walking Dead series has never been shy about changing details from the comic books to keep fans of the show on their toes.
However, in Glenn’s case, aside from for the fact that this episode contained two deaths instead of the one that the show’s creators promised fans, his death was more or less the same as it was in the comic books.
He was beaten to death by Negan in front of Maggie and all of his friends.
Why did The Walking Dead decide to kill Glenn?
It is rare for The Walking Dead to kill off a character so similarly to how they did in the comics, but Robert Kirkman, the creator of the show, has explained that Glenn’s death was too integral to the storyline to have it happen in any other way.
Narratively, it made sense that Glenn’s death was imminent since he had already escaped death a couple of times throughout the course of the show. Moreover, he completed his character arc by falling in love with Maggie and starting a family.
In the grand scheme of things, Glenn’s death was one of the biggest catalysts for Rick’s eventual crusade against Negan in this and following seasons of the show. It also certainly made Maggie a much more determined character.
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