Who Dies On ‘The Walking Dead’ Series Finale?

The Walking Dead is dead. The long-running AMC zombie drama has finally ended, wrapping up a 24-episode eleventh season with an extended finale that was . . . something of a mixed bag.

You can read my full review right here.

Spoilers follow. Obviously.

One of the questions on everyone’s mind as we came to this final episode is who would survive and who wouldn’t make it past the finish line in the end. So who dies in the series finale? The answer may surprise you . . . .

I mean, it surprised me but only because I endlessly hold out hope that AMC will take a bolder direction with this show. With a bloated cast right up to the final episode, I thought we’d see some gory, shocking deaths of at least a few of our favorite characters (though obviously not the ones already cast in spinoffs, a fact spoiled by AMC long ago).

We knew Daryl, Maggie and Negan would definitely survive given the spinoffs they’re in. Carol, too, more than likely since she was supposed to be in one until Melissa McBride backed out. In any case, most of the rest of the show’s cast were ripe for the plucking, but in the end only three characters died. Not even the villain, Pamela, met her maker.

Of the three deaths, only one mattered in any way, though to be fair—as I noted in my review—it was one of the most powerful, tragic and moving deaths of the entire eleven-season run.

Here’s everyone who died in The Walking Dead series finale.

Jules (Alex Sgambati)

So long Jules, we hardly knew you. Literally. We knew Jules as some chick that Luke started dating. They then disappeared from the show for a long, long time only to rejoin an episode or two back on the run from Commonwealth Stormtroopers near Oceanside. Jules is taken down by the horde of zombies near the beginning of the episode. She gets the one “eaten by a pack of zombies” death in an episode that should have had at least four.

Luke (Dan Fogler)

Luke, in some ways, is less lucky than his girlfriend. When she’s grabbed by the walkers, he goes to save her and his leg is chomped on. His friends grab him and tear him away from the zombies and drag him off to the hospital where they hack off his leg with a hacksaw to stop the infection. He bleeds out while Yumiko and company weep over him. For way, way, way too long. The show tries to treat this like some major death when Luke is a character that’s little more than a footnote at this point.

Rosita (Christian Serratos)

Of the three deaths in the series finale, only Rosita’s was important or impactful. But I will give credit where it’s due: This was one of the show’s most heart-wrenching deaths. In a lot of ways, this is thanks to the superb performances from Christian Serratos and Josh McDermitt, who plays Eugene. As I noted in my review, these two were the stars of the finale and their interactions around Rosita’s impending death after she’s bitten by a walker, are some of the best in The Walking Dead period. I got quite emotional during these scenes, which is not something that really ever happens when I watch this show. Shocked, sure, but emotional? That’s rare.

It turns out we owe Rosita’s death to Serratos herself. According to showrunner Angela Kang, speaking with Variety:

“She felt that the end of her story should be that she sacrifices herself or dies in the pursuit of trying to save her child and the next generation,” Kang says. “We try to take those sort of things into account, if actors come to us and go, ‘I think it’s important that the end of my story feels like this’ and that’s kind of the collaborative part of what we do. We gave that a lot of thought and talked about it with various people who get to approve or not approve certain decisions. I think Christian did an amazing job in the episode. I cried the whole time, as she was doing her scenes. It was really cool to see just the friendship that Christian and Josh [McDermitt, who plays Eugene] have in real life. It wound up working really beautifully.”

And that’s all, folks. Just three. Three deaths—two of which barely register—in the series finale to a show about a zombie apocalypse. I know that character deaths aren’t what it’s all about, but surely a bloodier finale would have been more fitting, tense and powerful.

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