Early in 2016, The Walking Dead on AMC’s sixth season ended with arguably its greatest episode, as Jeffrey Dean Morgan brought Negan to screens in the last ten minutes of an episode that cranked the tension up to ten and then just kept going up the scale. The episode ended with the immortal line, “You can breathe. You can blink. You can cry. Hell, you’re all gonna be doing that,” as Negan lifted Lucille and battered one of Rick’s group to death. However it was almost seven months before fans found out whether the show would follow the comics or go in a different direction, and on October 23rd, they found out the answer when season 7 began with the brutal, gory deaths of Abraham and Glenn. On the fifth anniversary of the cataclysmic episode, fans took to Twitter to show that they still aren’t over the episode and the carnage it delivered.
While the majority of fans knew what to expect from the episode, that didn’t mean everyone was prepared for one of the most violent scenes to air on network TV at the time, and despite the show having a TV-MA rating, the complaints flooded in claiming the episode went too far. Anyone who has read the graphic novels will know that it could have actually gone even further, but as it was, the Federal Communications Commission were inundated with complaints.
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“The AMC show The Walking Dead has transformed from people killing soulless animated corpses into a sadistic, emotional torture by showing people killing other people in the most brutal and sadistic ways,” one fan from Virginia wrote. “The last episode of season 6 and the latest episode of season 7 made me very anxious and sick to my stomach.”
“The season opener of The Walking Dead on AMC was beyond brutal, beyond sick and beyond evil,” another complaint read. “I know there is a warning posted before airing, but kids can still see this. Watching a favourite character’s (human) head being repeatedly pulverized into the ground by another human until there is nothing left is beyond comprehension. I find it hard to believe that this is allowed to be aired, yet 2 people having sex and showing even part of a genital is not. Absolutely disgusting.”
According to Scott Gimple, who wrote the episode, it wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs to write. In an interview with Looper at the time, Gimple said, “That episode was really painful to write, and I think I was going through it from Rick, Maggie, and Sasha’s perspective, and Rosita’s as well – feeling it from their side of things. On a script like that, everything is shut down in life, and you’re just working on that. And you’re just getting inside of that, and that was, from a writing perspective, very difficult to go down that road. And to live inside that episode and then to shoot that episode and feel it. It was traumatic for me especially, I’m close with Steven Yeun and Michael Cudlitz. Even to write that episode correctly, I think you had to feel it, and it was pretty traumatizing. All of the deaths have been very hard, extremely hard. But that one, I kind of lived through it to write it.”
Of course, the deaths in the episode also hit fans hard, and many mourned the loss of Glenn and Abraham all over again as they commemorated the fifth anniversary of the night The Walking Dead reached a peak that would prove to also be its downfall, as nothing that followed could quite live up to it. The final season of The Walking Dead continues next year, but in the meantime you can see some of the many posts shared on social media about the most memorable episode in the show’s history.
5 years ago today, Negan killed Glenn & Abraham in “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” 💔 #TWDpic.twitter.com/0Kz7AJ9Z8O
— TWD Universe (@twdufans) October 23, 2021
Happy National Missing Glenn Day from my family to yours #TWDhttps://t.co/po4bTSdVAh
— rebeccaTWD (@rebeccaTWDlife) October 23, 2021
5 years ago today @TheWalkingDead aired 7×01 ‘The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be’. We lost Glenn & Abraham in this masterpiece of an episode. #TWD#TheWalkingDead#TWDFamilypic.twitter.com/iDMvJIMkOT
— 🧟♂️ (@WeAreTWD__) October 23, 2021
It’s been five years since we lost Glenn and Abe changing TF forever. I still miss them. It still hurts.☹️#TWD#TWDFamily#TheWalkingDeadpic.twitter.com/eLyhooy75i
— Grimes Family❤️🧔🏻👩🏾👦🏽👧🏻💌 (@courtgirl26) October 23, 2021
10/23/16 on this day we #TWDFamily will never ever forget when Negan brutally killed Glenn and Abraham right in front of their friends and family Ik I wont ever forget this episodes one of the most upsetting season premiere of all We Still Miss these 2 RIP Glenn And Abraham #TWDpic.twitter.com/vZKvAUXftg
— progamer🔥 (@Trevman891) October 23, 2021
Sigh 😔 I can’t believe It’s been 5 years since Glenn and Abraham died the lost but not forgotten Abraham had the best mustache on the show and Glenn was the best pizza delivery boy #TWD#Glenn#Abraham#TheWalkingDeadpic.twitter.com/9uy1RFCRjq
— Number one Father Gabriel Stan but spooky 🎃👻🕷 (@Dosch311) October 23, 2021
It’s the 5 year anniversary since we lost Glenn and Abraham #TWDpic.twitter.com/yDLqycdy2I
— jeffrey (@jeffmmatvfan) October 23, 2021
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