Remember Negan showing up for the first time in The Walking Dead? Who could forget it. Swaggering around like he owned the place, bringing the Alexandrians (literally) to their knees. It hit us like, well, a baseball bat to the head. It could have turned out very differently, though. The two who did up on the receiving end of Lucille shook us to the core – but, as Chandler Riggs (AKA Carl) reveals, there were two other alternate execution scenes involving some other beloved characters.
Whilst appearing at the Fandemic Tour in Sacramento (H/T ComicBook.com), Chandler Riggs took to the stage for a little Q&A. Inevitably, that Negan scene came up.
When asked whether he knew who was biting the bullet in that Walking Dead season 6 finale, he stated that “when we got the script, there was three different versions, and three different versions that we shot,” before continuing with the bombshell. “Versions where Glenn and Abraham died, and then another version where Maggie and Aaron died, and another one where Aaron and Eugene died.”
Ooft. Can you imagine how rough it would’ve been if Maggie had taken the hit instead of Glenn? Even worse, I think the backlash to an Aaron and Eugene double-death would have killed the show off there and then in terms of being a big fat cop-out.
They were never going down that route, though. Riggs mentions how those who mattered were still very much in the know: “Obviously, those [deleted] versions weren’t as intense and as thorough as the real ones — even so, only the editors knew which one was the real one and the actors and crew and whatnot, and not, like, everyone in post-production, like it usually is.”
Even so, the fact that they went through the trouble of filming those scenes is testament to how captivated we all were at the time. Here’s hoping the show can reach those highs again when Rick bows out in The Walking Dead season 9.
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