Warning: The following post contains spoilers from the Sunday, Nov. 22, episode of The Walking Dead. Do not read on if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to be spoiled!
Good things come to those who wait! After four episodes of screaming at their TVs, fans of The Walking Dead finally got the answers they so desperately desired on Sunday, Nov. 22. Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun), who was last seen at the bottom of a pile of walkers noshing on some unidentified organs, is, in fact, alive.
The former pizza deliveryman managed to hide under a dumpster while the walker horde made a meal out of Nicholas (Michael Traynor).
“It proves this world can take the story of the good guy winning sometimes,” Yeun, 31, who has basically been in hiding for weeks, said on The Talking Dead aftershow. “I feel relieved, I feel very grateful, I feel so amazed at the response.”
One of the show’s only remaining original stars kept his character’s outcome secret from everyone he knew.
“I feel bad that I couldn’t say anything to everyone, family, friends. I’m pretty sure I lost some friends along the way. It’s kind of been overwhelming,” he admitted. “I have not been out much. I frequent a lot of takeout. My apartment looks like a hoarder’s house.”
That’s because he was under strict orders to keep his lips sealed, especially when it came to this story line.
“People on the show all have to sign NDAs, Non Disclosure Agreements, but in this case we literally said, ‘Do you talk in your sleep?’ and if someone said yes, we offered them some duct tape so they could duct tape their months and not spoil it,” EP Gale Anne Hurd joked alongside Yeun on Sunday’s The Talking Dead.
Glenn’s survival was important to the AMC smash because the writers wanted viewers to feel the same fear and confusion the characters feel every week in their dystopian society. (Indeed, Glenn’s wife Maggie (Lauren Cohan) has been desperately searching for her husband after revealing two weeks ago that she is pregnant with his child.)
“It was important to do a story this year about uncertainty, and that the audience would share that uncertainty that the characters had,” EP Scott Gimple added.