I will inform you right now, if you haven’t seen Season 6, Episode 3 of The Walking Dead, this is a ginormous SPOILER ALLERT!!! And I can’t believe you have yet to watch it. Episode 3: Thank You is shocking and heart-wrenching.
I thought about writing this review Sunday night and posting it first thing Monday morning, but I needed a minute to pause and absorb what happened. I HAD to process. It was definitely an emotional night for me and I was stunned into silence.
I watch The Walking Dead every week, at pool hall called the Green Room, with a group of friends who are dedicated, and sometimes rabid, fans. I am an enthusiastic watcher. I L.O.V. E the damned show. The suspense, the gore, the action, it is right down my alley of things that excite the gore-monger within me. We have a Mystery Science Theater 3000 type of atmosphere where clever remarks are thrown into the mix as the show plays. We don’t speak over the dialogue; we just add our own special brand of commentary. RULE: If you don’t get that, then don’t come out to play when the “stories” are on. Shut up!
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Sunday night started off in the usual fashion. We all gathered around the bar to watch the episode. As it began we sat in almost complete silence for the lead-in. The previous week was filled with Wolves and more “dead walking” than you could shake a stick at. The sheer size of the herd that had amassed was enough to take your breath away.
Rick’s plan to lead them away was a solid one until the damned Wolves showed up and started killing folks. Our ever steady Carol (Melissa McBride) kept her head and came up with a plan to infiltrate the aggressors. Morgan (Lennie James) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) took care of business and rallied the troops that were left to defend and keep their home. The stage was set for the more Walker wrangling and near-death experiences.
The group outside the wall runs toward the sound of the horn blaring from home. The second half of the herd had broken off and was now following the sound of the truck horn and were close on the hills of Rick, Michonne, Glenn, and the rest. As they fled they lost an Alexandrian fairly quickly after stopping to take a break and regroup. He wasn’t paying attention and a walker snuck up on him. The Alexandrian woman fell and injured herself and was now a burden.
We can see quite clearly that these sheltered people from Alexandria have no idea how to survive in the wilderness and will slow our core team down. What I hoped to see was that some among them would step up and show us what they were made of – besides Heath (Corey Hawkins), the new T-Dog/Tyreese replacement. Rick was right to tell his team to save them if they could, but to leave them if they couldn’t – Just Survive Somehow (Episode 2, Season 6).
With two members of the team injured and another bitten, it did not look good for their survival. But Glenn, OH Glenn, our moral center since the demise of our beloved Hershel and Dale , is determined to leave NO ONE behind in spite of Rick’s words. His determination to keep his humanity in check and still do what he needs to do to survive is both admirable and frustrating. But we trust/trusted in Glenn to lead as many in the team he was leading back to safety. That’s what he does…or did.
I mean, we knew people were going to die. What they were attempting was a dangerous feat. But it needed to be done. If horde of Walkers broke through the truck barrier in that valet without warning there was no way the community could have survived. The walls of the Alexandria would have come tumbling down around them.
I am not naïve enough to think that everything was going to be OK during “Operation Steer the Dead Away from Alexandria,” but I was not expecting all that took place on Sunday. If you are a follower of the graphic novels you knew that Glenn is living on borrowed time. His death is imminent, but it’s not supposed to happen yet.
Glenn is a lynchpin in the group dynamic of the show. His strong character and his steadfast decency are needed. It keeps a healthy balance in the family. And really, are they going to play the Hershel/Tyreese switch-a-roo again? Or, are they attempting to distract us from the possibility of killing another Season 1 character? Maybe Daryl? We all know he is not tied to the comics, but his level of popularity is through the roof!
The thing about the character is also that his inherent goodness was bound to get him into trouble. He has often risked too much of his own safety in order to follow a “righteous” path and “save” people. In Episode 3 of Season 6 Glenn did not stray from his self. His need to save and rehabilitate those that we, as the audience, just don’t have the ability to make it on the outside is admirable if not just damned naïve!
When Glenn sets off with that coward Nicholas, we all knew it was a bad idea. But the closeted optimist in me wanted to believe that perhaps this would be a turning point for Nicholas. I hoped, for once, he would nut up and be the man who Glenn hoped he could be. But you could see it in his beady little eyes. He just didn’t have IT!
When that coward shot himself in the head and took Glenn down with him into a pool of the undead to be eaten alive, I was stunned into silence and disbelief. Actually, we were all stunned into silence.
Room for hope?
There are some conspiracy theorists out there who think that Glenn may be alive just yet. The last time we see him he is surrounded my sea of Walkers with blood gushing around him, but not out of his mouth. It appears that the dead are making a buffet out of our beloved Glenn. But did he fall under Nicholas? Was that actually Nicholas that the undead were feasting on? Did they lose his scent in all the gore? Like Michonne used her walkers or when the team covered themselves in dead goo to get through the city.
I mean, for those of you that watch The Talking Dead wrap-up on a regs, you know that when a major character dies on The Walking Dead, they are usually featured on that show afterwards. But there was no Steven Yeun on the show. Yvette Nicole Brown was there, but no Steven Yeun. Glenn was also noticeable left out of the post-mortem wrap-up of the characters that died during the show. The statement that Scott Gimple gave about Glenn’s fate was also VERY vague.
We just don’t really know what has happened. I will give it to the show’s writers though; they definitely got me on that one. I had to take a minute to myself to “get over” that one and I continue to need a pause. If our fair Glenn survives this, I will start my own Facebook page entitled: If Glenn Dies, We Riot Up In This BITCH!! – I’m already a member of the Daryl one.
