‘The Walking Dead:’ Steven Yeun Explains Glenn’s Tragic Last Words

Former Walking Dead star Steven Yeun has shared his thoughts behind his final line as Glenn, who after being beaten with a baseball bat by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) told wife Maggie (Lauren Cohan), “Maggie, I’ll find you.”

“This might be disturbing, but I think how I tried to play it was getting hit took Glenn back to his last memory, his last really intense memory of Maggie. And he kind of was gone by that point,” Yeun said at Walker Stalker Con London when prompted to explain the line.

“So yeah, that’s kind of where he was talking from. Kind of around the time when he was looking for Maggie when they were split up before Terminus.”

Could the line be interpreted to mean Glenn will find Maggie in the afterlife? “That too,” Yeun said. “It’s kind of supposed to say all those things. I think Glenn is on that search for the person he loves, and he has her, he’s found her, but also, he just got hit in the face really hard.”

Yeun agreed with that interpretation in an October 2016 episode of live aftershow Talking Dead, telling the audience his character “dies in such a Glenn way. Still not thinking about himself. It’s important that he puts those final words out as a way of saying, ‘Look out for one another.’”

“In this life or the next,” Cohan agreed. “They’re star-crossed lovers. ‘I’ll find you, I’ll be with you, I’ll watch over you. I’ll be there.’”

The Season Seven premiere — which saw the gruesome, back-to-back deaths of both Glenn and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) — immediately came under fire for its graphic depiction of the executions and was swiftly criticized by the Parents Television Council, who condemned The Walking Dead as “brutally explicit” and “one of the most graphically violent shows we’ve ever seen on television.”

That episode was so unforgiving it was at the center of numerous complaints filed to the FCC, with some viewers calling the Greg Nicotero-directed episode “sadistic, emotional torture” and “beyond brutal, beyond sick and beyond evil.” Others complained it was worse than witnessing ISIS beheadings.

How does Yeun feel about the episode turning some viewers away?

“I don’t know, it’s like one of those, ‘Thank you, I guess?’” Yeun said. “It’s a compliment, but also… you don’t want the show to not be seen, you want the show to go on. So I don’t know, I say like a confused thanks.”

Yeun also said Daryl (Norman Reedus) is not to blame for Glenn’s death, and on the topic of Negan’s growing redemption, “Things change. People change.”

The Walking Dead returns with its tenth season this October on AMC.

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