SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Sunday night still bothers so many of us, much more so than numerous other intense episodes of The Walking Dead. And questions abound, haunting us, making us go over that particularly horrid moment in our heads. Some rewatched the sequence searching for possibilities: chest positioning, where the blood was or wasn’t, screams, and the placement of a dumpster. We do this hoping against hope that fan favorite Glenn somehow survived what looked like a horrible demise on The Walking Dead.

He’s done so before…. 

    
 
Glenn has survived so many impossible odds, he has become a strong symbol of hope for humanity on the show…

   
   
And our hopes have suffered horribly at the dastardly hands of Kirkman and Gimple and Nicotero, et al…

  
But they have also seemed to be wandering away from the comic book, improving upon the story that started there, creating moments that rose above the comic’s achievements. One way has been by being smart enough to avoid mistakes made in the past, sometimes terrible, trust-violating, inorganic horrors that caused many of us to stop reading the comic…

  
Which is why it is so hard to believe the show runners of TWD would willfully repeat the same Crime Against Fans. 

And yet, here we are haunted by Sunday night, mourning the apparent meaningless death of a beloved character again.

Gimple went so far as to offer a message to The Talking Dead viewers, seeming to say such things must occur so the story doesn’t suffer from having safe, untouchable characters.

Or he could be messing with us.

Or maybe , gulp, not.

The reaction to Glenn’s comic book death was overwhelmingly negative, but it seemed then that Kirkman didn’t care then (which is admittedly his right as the creator), so why would he care now?

Or he could be messing with us.

Or maybe, sniff, not.

If, as they have always said, serving the story means no one is safe, then Glenn could have been killed to prove that. If this is true, the question that needs to be asked is … What story are we watching? If last season’s advertising image is to be believed, this is a story of survival….

  
And, if this is a story of survival, shouldn’t one of their best survivors do so? Shouldn’t our symbol of hope for humanity  find a way? Or is this merely a “survive for awhile” story? If so, why are we watching? If there truly is no hope, if all of this drama and pain and desperation only results in postponing the inevitable, is The Walking Dead worth our time?

After Glenn was killed so inorganically, so unheroically, so meaninglessly in the comic book, the answer for me became “No.” I stopped reading. I hoped the show would prove to be a different experience.

I still hold onto that hope…

… Gulp, sniff…

But it may be fading….
Christopher Ryan is author of City of Woe, available on Kindle and Nook, and in print. For more info, click here.