The scene, which was reportedly intentionally leaked before the season 7 premiere to misdirect fans, shows Maggie as Negan's first victim.
- Oct 25, 2016
AceShowbiz - Back in summer, it was reported that "The Walking Dead" filmed the death scene multiple times with different victims to keep the mystery regarding Negan's victim a secret. Prior to the seventh season premiere, a scene leaked online showing Maggie as Negan's first victim.
However, Maggie wasn't the person who died in the season opener that aired on on Sunday night, October 23. Instead, it was her husband Glenn who was bludgeoned to death by Negan, after Abraham suffered from the same fate earlier in the episode.
The leaked clip is apparently one of those alternate takes filmed during the production of season 7 last summer. It's unclear who leaked the clip, but some believe the leak was intentional to misdirect fans since there had been rumors that Abraham and Glenn would be the victims in the season premiere.
Some fans were left horrified with the brutal killings in the episode titled "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be". Speaking at a press conference on Monday, executive producer Greg Nicotero explained the need of the gory sequence, "In this instance, we felt that it was important to launch us into the season by showing the extent of what Negan is capable of doing because that drives so much of where the series is going from here on in. It's graphic and it's horrible and while we were designing the makeups and testing the makeups...we wanted to push it a little bit."
Nicotero found another aspect of the episode more haunting that Negan's brutality. "The haunting remnants of that episode are very, very similar to how I felt when I read the comic book and I experienced that sense of loss and that futility to step in," he said. "Rick Grimes is unable to stop this and that's something that we've never seen in the show. I think that the violence and brutality are a part of it, but I think there's a helplessness. Seeing our hero completely crushed in front of us is more disturbing than the actual violence to me."
Nicotero wasn't worried that fans contemplated quitting the show after watching their favorite characters' brutal deaths, because that only meant they successfully got the audience hooked to the characters. "Well, I would say that that means that we have done something to affect these people in a way that they don't necessarily know how to process," he responded to fans' reactions. "I think it's a kneejerk reaction that people have because they care about these characters. Listen, if we killed someone and they didn't care...then that means that we haven't done something to connect our people to the characters."
