If any moment from The Walking Dead is to go down in infamy, it’s the death of Glenn. The beloved character, played by Steven Yeun, was there right from the first season, becoming an instant fan-favourite and earning audience sympathy, whether battling for his life against hordes of the undead, or engaging in a sweet romance with Lauren Cohan’s Maggie. But just as the character does in the original Robert Kirkman comics, Glenn’s journey came to a brutal end on screen at the hands of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan – a sadistic leader who looks to break the spirit of Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes by bashing Glenn’s head in with barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat ‘Lucille’. It was a stomach-churning sequence that proved just as controversial in adaptation as in its original form.
Even Lincoln wonders if it was a step too far for audiences. “I do still think [Glenn’s death] might have been when we over-egged the omelette,” he tells Empire in a brand new interview, looking back over his years on the show. “Maybe it was lingering too much.” Filming it was, he says, among “the most intense nights of shooting I’ve ever been part of”, throwing Morgan (“One of the nicest guys you’re ever going to meet, playing one of the most unpleasant characters,” he declares) right into the deep end. “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,” Lincoln recalls. “[Morgan] came over and went, ‘Is this normal?’ I went, ‘Yeah, everybody just keeps going.’ It was an extraordinary night.”
After bowing out of The Walking Dead in Season 9, Lincoln recently reprised his role in follow-up series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, exploring the aftermath of Grimes’ unexpected departure from the main series, and reuniting him with lost love Michonne (Danai Gurira). “This was the reason for doing The Ones Who Live,” he explains. “We could have walked away from the show, but we thought, ‘Why not reunite these two lovers and see if their love has survived, if they’re still the same people after all that time and distance apart?’ The moment we were able to meet one another on camera, the air changed, and it all made sense.” At least somebody gets a happy ending, then. Just not you, Glenn.
Read Empire’s interview with Andrew Lincoln – looking back over his pivotal scenes playing Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead and beyond – in The Rings Of Power Season 2 issue, on sale Thursday 4 July. Pre-order a copy here – choose the Galadriel cover, or the Sauron cover. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is available to stream now – alongside every season of The Walking Dead – on Sky / NOW.