‘The Walking Dead’ Character Fans Surprisingly Miss

Fans of The Walking Dead took to Reddit to share a mutual grief of Andrea’s all-too-early death on the AMC series.

While Laurie Holden‘s character never earned any fan-favorite status during her tenure, the comic book counterpart in Robert Kirkman’s source material was drastically different from the live-action version. In fact, in the comics, it is Andrea who ends up becoming Rick’s new wife and showing off impressive survival skills such as becoming a sharpshooter with a rifle. On the TV series, Holden’s version of the character ended up involved with the Governor and killed off before any of this could happen.

“Laurie Holden was never given much to do in the show,” AhTreyYou wrote in a Reddit thread. “If they actually built her character up with better writing, she could have been a completely different character.”

Others go straight to the source material where Andrea is a fan-favorite character. “Thy Andrea I have seen in the comics to me seemed gritty and bad-ass as she got more time in the comics,” Apollospade wrote. “TV Andrea while a victim of terrible writing [and] the actress to me lacked that certain grit.”

Some users don’t want to blame Holden for their lack of attachment to TV’s version of Andrea. “What’s weird is I thought she did a good job as the cop in Silent Hill, she came across as a strong, tough character and wasn’t the least bit annoying,” Rachelgraychel wrote. “I’m gonna chalk it up to bad writing and/or direction of the Andrea character.”

Crediting Holden’s impressive body of work outside of The Walking Dead, Dorie95 also blames the writing but also a change in showrunners for the lackluster live-action version of the character. “I am convinced that Holden could pull of TV version of Andrea,” Dorie95 wrote. “I believe Darabont perfectly knew what he was doing by casting her in this role. If we look back, her scene in “Vatos” during Amy death was one of the most emotional and powerfull scene in the entire season 1. And definitely one of the most memorable. There was a lot of a great potential; there really was. If Darabont was still a showrunner, Andrea as a character and Holden’s performance would be quite different. Unfortunately, Mazzara couldn’s see what good he had there. And I believe there had to be some sort of animosity between him and Holden. Truth to be told, from the production team only Greg Nicotero understood how big mistakes the had done in terms of Andrea development and what they had lost. He was pretty vocal about that.”

Many others wrote messages of support for Holden and her Andrea character, while others seem to not miss her at all. Where do you fall on this debate? Was Andrea taken from The Walking Dead too soon or was it the right time to get rid of her, years ago? Share your thoughts in the comment section!

The Walking Dead returns for the back half of its ninth season on February 10, 2019 at 9 pm ET. Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter and watch ComicBook.com’s After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes.