SPOILER ALERT: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS so turn back now if you aren’t caught up on ‘The Walking Dead’.
With the Season Nine finale of ‘The Walking Dead’ airing next week, the… *ahem* stakes just got raised big time, as Alpha and the Whisperers killed off ten of the cast of survivors, including two series regulars. However, as one of the stars says, viewers shouldn’t be too shocked as it seems the writers clearly didn’t really know what to do with them and hadn’t in some time.
On this Sunday’s episode, fans said goodbye to Enid played by Katelyn Nacon, and Alanna Masterson’s Tara, not to mention Henry (Matt Lintz), Tammy Rose (Brett Butler), and others who found their heads on spikes along a wall that now separates the Whisperer’s territory in the south from the others’. Tara was introduced in the fourth season, while Enid joined in the fifth. Enid was originally introduced as a potential love interest for Carl, who was killed off last season. Since then, she was made into the group’s medic. But even with that development, Nacon felt that the writers were grasping at straws to find something to do with her.
As she revealed to Insider:
“I thought I was going to die in like Season 6. I didn’t think my character was going to last as long as it did. So I’m glad I made it as far as I did. But I mean, I don’t know. I think around season eight, things started to slow down a lot for [Enid]. She was kind of in the background a lot, and her story wasn’t really progressing. Even with Season 9, she became a doctor, but the show didn’t really progress more with her character other than her becoming a doctor and getting a boyfriend. So I think, honestly, it was just running out of content for her, or something? I’m not really sure.
“I mean, at the beginning of the year, I thought it was going well with her learning how to be a doctor and everything. I thought there was going to be some exciting things to come, but I was a little bummed out with the second [half] of the season of her just kind of being pushed down into a love interest role.”
It probably says something that even with Tara and Enid, the one death that impacted viewers most was that of Henry, due to his connection to Carol and Ezekiel, even though he hadn’t been around as long as the others.
Expect more bloodshed in next week’s season finale! What did you think of these deaths? Were you shocked?
