Spoiler alert: If you haven’t yet watched the season 6 finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead (and really, if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?) read no further.
Now that we’ve piqued the curiosity of die-hard fans, let’s get to business. A YouTuber claims to have figured out who Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) beat to death with his barbed wire bat Lucille in the last moments of the riveting — yet frustratingly cliff-hung — episode. And, according to at least one superfan, it may be exactly who you thought it was.
YouTube user Federico Trione posted an isolated audio track with slowed down sound from the final moments in the episode. The result: the supposed reveal of some major details.
Listen closely, and Trione says you can hear Glenn’s (Steven Yuen) voice whisper “Magg-“ as if calling out to his wife Maggie (Lauren Cohan) right before being bludgeoned. That’s followed by a distinct, blood-curdling scream that sounds like Maggie pleading for “Glehhhh.”
Frankly, to our ears it sounds like a lot of warble, and not much substance.
That said, fans of the comic from which the show stems know that Glen is indeed the one who gets the bat. On the other hand, the show has been known to divert from the original story, sometimes subbing in one character for another in a similar scene. For example, it was Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) who got an arrow through the eye in the comics, not Denise (Merritt Wever.)
Glenn being the victim would make sense based on justifications Showrunner Scott Gimple has given for leaving viewers with that end-of-season cliffhanger. Among other reasons, he says it was essential to set up a bigger story in season seven. That could very well be Maggie’s rise as a new resident badass female who’s fuelled by the loss.
Several sources suggest that even the actors themselves don’t know who was killed in the episode, leading some to believe that many alternative scenes were shot, or the other angle of the shot has yet to be filmed.
In which case, whether the audio that’s claimed to be presented in this clip (can you hear it?) is real or not, it still might not be a true indication of who fell victim to the vicious beating. And we can’t ignore the possibility of Gimple planting audio tracks from previous episodes to fool viewers. Nevertheless, the clip has already been viewed almost 2.5 million times. And if there’s any truth to it, Glenn’s days may be done.