The Walking Dead: Is [SPOILER] Really Dead?

When The Walking Dead ended Sunday night, the entire audience could be heard giving off a collective gasp as their faces were plastered with shock. Did The Walking Dead really just do that?

Be warned, major spoilers follow for fifteenth episode of The Walking Dead‘s sixth season, East, follow. Seriously. Stop now.

To cap off the episode it looked like Dwight capped off Daryl! It was the one thing The Walking Dead fans thought the show would never do! After the camera was covered in Daryl’s blood and the screen cut to black, Dwight was heard saying, “You’ll be alright.”

Now, that line from Dwight could be sarcastic or even talking to Rosita. Daryl may very well be dead after that shot. That was a lot of blood on the camera and it didn’t look like something anyone would come back from, especially considering the fact that the Alexandria doctor is now dead.

That said, we did think Glenn would be super dead after being at the bottom of a walker pile in the first half of this season and he made it out unscathed. With any show like The Walking Dead, it’s never good to assume someone is dead until you a lifeless body (or in this show’s case, a zombified body).

The shot wasn’t exactly aimed at Daryl’s head, either. Daryl turned to Dwight and the bullet looks like it would have struck him in the left shoulder. Certainly, in the real world, it’s an injury that would be tough to come back from without proper medical attention. But remember, Carl literally got shot in the face a few weeks ago and within a couple of weeks was out and about just fine. We all remember when Sawyer took a bullet to the shoulder in the middle of the ocean on LOST and was able to make it out of that scenario without the help of a doctor. In the world of television, always assume they’re alive until there’s a body.

Dwight’s extra line, “You’ll be alright,” might be The Walking Dead learning from the backlash of framing Glenn as being dead earlier in the season only to have him return weeks later. Dwight’s comment would be the largest indication that Daryl still has, and will have, a pulse.

The injury, though, takes Daryl out of the picture as a threat to Negan (who will arrive before the end of next week’s 90-minute finale) for the time being.

The Walking Dead has one episode remaining in its sixth season, airing Sunday night at 9 PM ET on AMC.