'The Walking Dead' Stars Dish on That Latest Eye-Popping Comic Book Twist!

By
AMC


WARNING: If you have yet to see this week's all-new episode of
The Walking Dead, get out of here ASAP. (Just make sure you avoid those train tracks!) For everyone else, bring your safety goggles and read on…

And another eye bites the dust on The Walking Dead!

For the second time this season, one of our characters suffered a severely gruesome (and completely unexpected!) shot to the eye, but -- unlike Carl -- this week's latest victim did not survive the blow.

Let's all take a moment of small screen silence to honor Merritt Wever's brief yet powerful performance as Dr. Denise Cloyd.


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During what seemed like a routine run, Denise, Daryl and Rosita ventured out to a pharmacy and, after successfully raiding the shelves, the threesome decided to take a shortcut along the train tracks back to Alexandria. On their way home, Denise finally killed her very first walker, but during her triumphant speech about conquering fears, an arrow pierced through her skull and killed her mid-sentence.

Although fans were shocked at the spur-of-the-moment death, Wever has known all along that Denise's death was looming.

"I always knew that it would be a one-season thing -- that this was going to be a finite experience on the show," the Emmy-winning actress dished to Entertainment Weekly. "A couple of weeks before we shot the episode, Scott called and let me know the specifics of it. He’ll call and give you an idea of the emotional nuts and bolts of things, and he told me how it was actually going to happen as well."


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Despite the fact that Denise's death shocked us to our very core, Wever revealed that it actually wasn't a "big deal" to shoot the arrow-through-the-eye scene.

"It wasn’t all that complicated on my end," she shared. "They had put a prosthesis on my eye, so it was weird to be walking around with one eye permanently closed, but it was really easy. They really know what they’re doing down there and they’re really, really good at it."

AMC

For fans of the comics, Denise's death scene felt eerily familiar because an arrow through the eye is exactly how Abraham's character met his demise in issue #98 of TheWalking Dead graphic novels.


Josh McDermitt
, who plays mullet-loving Eugene, addressed this death switcheroo to Chris Hardwick on Sunday's episode of Talking Dead.


WATCH: 'The Dead' Teases Negan's Deadly Debut (and We're Terrified!)

"It easily could have been Eugene who died -- that's how dangerous this world is," McDermitt dished. "You even brought up that you thought that's how Abraham was going to go because that's obviously what happened in the comics. That's a great testament to our writers and [showrunner] Scott Gimple of remixing it and keeping things fresh and the audience on their toes who think they might know what is exactly going to happen."


The Walking Dead
airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.


What did you think of Denise's shocking demise? Do you wish that it had been Abraham's time to go? Share your thoughts with @LeanneAguilera on Twitter!