The Walking Dead’s Most Controversial Death Should Have Happened One Season Earlier

Several seasons into The Walking Dead, it was a long-established practice for the show to kill off some of its most important characters, some of whom were also beloved by fans. But one character’s death understandably caused more controversy than any other, in part because of the brutal manner in which it happened.

The Walking Dead’s most haunting death will always be Glenn Rhee being bludgeoned to a pulp in front of the mother of his baby, by Negan Smith in the season 7 premiere. The idea of Glenn dying in the way he did was enough to turn many longstanding viewers off the show.

But there was an additional factor which made the scene feel like a betrayal of those watching. Almost all The Walking Dead’s major characters die before the series is over, so Glenn’s death in itself – horrifying though it was – shouldn’t have been a problem. The fact is, however, he should have died one season earlier than he actually did.

As inevitable as it may have been, Glenn’s death was still The Walking Dead’s worst. The show’s newly introduced villain Negan took a barbed wire-covered baseball bat to his head, as immediate recompense for Daryl Dixon trying to fight back. It remains a vomit-inducing moment in the series, no matter how many times you rewatch it.

The casual way Negan turned around and split Glenn’s skull open after telling the group, “I need you to know me,” sent chills down the spines of everyone watching. What made it worse was the excruciating emotional agony Glenn’s partner, Maggie, clearly felt watching on, and Glenn’s final words, spoken with his eye already perforate: “

What made this unedifying spectacle even more galling was that Glenn ought to have died early in the show’s previous season. In the episode “Thank You” near the beginning of season 6, he fell into a dumpster surrounded by walkers, who seemingly devoured his body within seconds.

There was surely no feasible way that Glenn could have survived this incident, and viewers had to make peace with the fact that one of their favorite characters, an original member of the main group from season 1, wasn’t coming back. Then, a few episodes later, came one of 

At the start of season 6’s seventh episode, “Heads Up”, we were suddenly returned to the scene of Glenn’s apparent death. There, it was revealed that he’d somehow managed to avoid being eaten by the swarm of walkers surrounding him, before crawling under a dumpster to hide. This moment was 

As much as no one wanted to see Glenn die, his survival in this scenario made absolutely no sense, and undermined the suspension of disbelief we needed to invest in the entire series. No character or plot twist should come before a show’s internal logic. Because of this moment, 

Amber Desiree “AD” Smith and Ollie Sutherland are opening up about what becoming parents means to them.

In an exclusive clip shared with PEOPLE ahead of the upcoming episode of Smith’s podcast What’s the Reality?, the soon-to-be mom, 34, and the Love Is Blind UK star, 33, sat down to talk about becoming parents.

When Smith asks Sutherland what he’s most excited about when becoming a dad, he tells her that it’s “so hard to summarize it” because it’s constantly changing.

“It’s so hard to summarize it,” he says. “If you’d asked me this question a year ago, I’d had an answer, and then if you’d asked me this question several months ago, when we first found out, we were expecting that [would be different].”

“Each day and each stage has made me more excited for different things and made me view fatherhood differently,” Sutherland adds.

The soon-to-be girl dad, who tied the knot with Smith in October, five months after they announced they were expecting, goes on to share that he’s looking forward to having a similar bond with his daughter that he currently has with his nieces and nephews.

“Obviously, I love my nieces and nephews and the joy they bring to my life, so I’m just excited to have that, but I haven’t got to give [them] back to my siblings at the end of the day anymore,” he explains. “And the bond I have with my niece and nephew, it’s going to be tenfold because I’m going to be the person they come to for support and love and protection.”

“I’m just looking forward to having that bond and excited about just all the fun we’re going to have,” the reality TV star continues. “It’s going to be like having a little, a mini best friend, another travel companion.”

When asking Smith what becoming a mother means to her, she admits that she doesn’t fully know yet, but can confirm that the feelings she’s experiencing now “are pretty indescribable.”

“I don’t know what it means to me yet, but I think the feelings that I’m feeling are pretty indescribable,” she says. “I just feel like this overwhelming need to protect my daughter from everything.”

“I’m so scared,” adds Smith. “Her being in here, I can protect her and keep her safe, and then I have to bring her out into this world, and I’m just like, ‘Can I put her in a bubble?'”

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Smith continues, saying she wants to do everything she can to keep her baby girl safe and happy.

“I just want to put her in a bubble and just keep her safe, but I know I’m not going to be able to do that,” she says. “And I know that she’s going to have such a great dad to protect her [and a] great mom to protect her.”

She concludes, “I just want her to be safe and happy, so I think motherhood right now means just keeping her safe and happy.”