The Walking Dead: Greg Nicotero Explains Glenn's First Kills

Not Tomorrow Yet took Glenn to a place he had never been before. I'm not talking about the Saviors' compound. I'm talking about a state of mind where he is capable of killing. Spoilers for Not Tomorrow Yet follow.

Through the show's first 79 episodes and however many years they covered, Glenn managed to keep is hands clean of taking human life. That ended with Not Tomorrow Yet. Glenn agreed with Rick's plan to raid the Savior's compound and in doing so, knew he would have to kill.

Over the weekend, we had the chance to talk to The Walking Dead's executive producer Greg Nicotero for his thoughts on the matter and some perspective on Glenn's state of mind following the shocking moments.

Here's what Nicotero had to say:

In my opinion, they're all being forced to get their hands dirty. The episode opens with Carol very, very honestly baking cookies and delivering cookies and flirting with Tobin. She's struggling to make a new life for herself and then Rick shows up and he's like, "Hey, by the way, we're gonna have to kill people," and it's one of those things where the entire first part of the episode shows people going through relationships and emotions and breaking up and getting together and saying goodbye and doing all these things which make the humanity exhibited there dark in direct contrast to, "Oh, by the way, we're going into the compound at night when they're asleep and we're preemptively killing all these people."

With Glenn, it's something that he's been very fortunate about not ever having had to deal with in the past. He has the great conversation with Heath, where he's like, "I've never had to do this before and now we're about to do it." But they're willing to do it because it preserves their way of life. I mean, when Rick says in the church, "Alright guys, anybody that's not down with it, let's talk about it. I love the fact that he's not setting the law. He's putting it out there for a vote. Nobody except for Morgan stands up and says, "I don't think we should do this. So, Glenn is onboard.

That scene was pretty intense to shoot. I think what the button of that whole moment is, he takes the knife out of Heath's hand and spares Heath the same fate that he has just put upon himself which is having to kill another human being. And then he stands up and looks at the wall and sees the Polaroid collection of bashed in human heads. That takes a little bit of the sting out of it. These people relish in a perversed way in beating people's heads in with a baseball bat and take photos of it and put those photos on their wall. There's a weird justification in Glenn's mind, like, "You know what I just did this horrific thing by taking another human life," and as he's about to walk out the door, he realizes, "Maybe I just saved someone from the fate that I'm looking at," by looking at these photos.

Although Glenn took the knife from Heath, the two ultimately had to gun down a handful of Saviors after they luckily found themselves trapped in the armory. It may have been easier though, having known at that point that this group takes pictures of their victims and truly being in a position of self-defense.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 PM ET on AMC.