By At one time AMC’s “The Walking Dead” was the biggest show on television – ratings wise it was a juggernaut that nothing could touch.
Starting midway through the third season, it had a streak of 75 consecutive episodes with more than 10 million same-day viewership – unprecedented in cable.
The show rose throughout its first four seasons and hit an all time peak with its fifth-season premiere snagging 17.29 million viewers in Live+Same Day ratings.
That overall fifth season was also the show’s highest with 14.38 million average viewers per episode – almost triple the 5.2 million average of the first season.
The wheels started to come off after that. Season 6 had a slight dip to a 13.15 million average, Season 7 saw a stronger dip to 11.35 million and then things really fell apart with Season 8 falling to an 7.82 million average. By the time of the show’s eleventh and final season, it only once barely managed to get above a same day audience of just 2 million.
If there was one specific incident that led to the wide revolt of the show – it’s the infamous death of Glenn (Steven Yeun) who was brutally beaten to death with a baseball bat by the just introduced and sadistic Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
Looking back on it this week, actor Andrew Lincoln (who played series lead Rick Grimes) tells Empire he thinks that scene is where they pushed things too far and the audience never forgave them for it: “I do still think [Glenn’s death] might have been when we over-egged the omelette. Maybe it was lingering too much.”
Lincoln says the scene remains “the most intense nights of shooting I’ve ever been part of” and says Morgan was thrown into the deep end with the Negan role:
“One of the nicest guys you’re ever going to meet, playing one of the most unpleasant characters. He had to do this extraordinary monologue on his first day at work, and everybody was on their knees and weeping when they weren’t on camera. [Morgan] came over and went, ‘Is this normal?’ I went, ‘Yeah, everybody just keeps going.’ It was an extraordinary night.”
Lincoln himself bowed out of the show during its ninth season but recently reprised his role in the follow-up series “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live”.
The post Lincoln Reflects On Key “Walking Dead” Death appeared first on Dark Horizons.
