There’ve been countless crushing character exits on The Walking Dead over the years – many of them come from the recent season 9 alone – but one of the most traumatizing is the death of Glenn back in the season 7 premiere at the hands of Negan. Fans will remember that Daryl lashed out at the Savior after he murdered Abraham, which caused the tyrant to kill the beloved former pizza boy as punishment.
Daryl obviously blamed himself for a while over his outburst, but actor Steven Yeun doesn’t think that Norman Reedus’ character is at fault at all. While speaking at Walker Stalker Con London this month, Yeun said anybody would have reacted the same way as Daryl after what Negan had done to his friend.
“No. I think nobody would have just sat there and taken all that, whoever it was. So I don’t know, it seems like you can’t even blame anything. It’s just what happened.”
Let’s imagine for a moment, though, that Daryl had reigned it in and Glenn had managed to escape that confrontation unscathed. Where would he and his wife Maggie have gone from here if he survived? This was a question put to Yeun at the con, one which he spent some time mulling over before coming up with an answer.
“There’s so many options. But I think what would have happened is definitely Glenn and Maggie would have tried to forge their own path, I think that would have been real. Maybe they would have gone to Hilltop, maybe they would have stayed in Alexandria, just kind of carved their own space there. But I don’t see them abandoning their group. I don’t see them just up and leaving. But I do see them growing and moving on beyond kind of what they’re expected to be.”
It sounds like Yeun thinks the Rhees’ journey would have been similar to Maggie’s own arc over the following couple of seasons, which ended when Lauren Cohan left the show in the first half of season 9. The actress has promised that she’s not done with The Walking Dead, though, and will return eventually. Unlike Yeun, who’s sworn that he’s not going to return to the show as he was happy to go when he did. Sounds like he thanks Daryl more than he blames him, then.