The Walking Dead flirted with a comic book romance when Eugene (Josh McDermitt) went in for the kiss with longtime crush Rosita (Christian Serratos). Currently residing at the Hilltop colony to engage in secret correspondence with radio contact Stephanie (Margot Bingham), Eugene was reunited with Rosita when she was sent there for medical treatment after surviving a vicious encounter with Whisperer Beta (Ryan Hurst). After rejecting his attempt to be rezoned into Love Town in 1003, “Ghosts,” where an exhausted Rosita helped fend off a 49-hour walker onslaught, Rosita prompted Eugene to kiss her in 1011, “Morning Star,” as the Hilltop readied itself for war with Alpha (Samantha Morton) and her walker army.
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“You like this girl, huh?” Rosita asks a flush Eugene about his radio relationship with Stephanie. Because Rosita earlier intercepted a call from Stephanie, scaring her off, Eugene has reached the “unpleasant conclusion that she finds me unworthy of her further attentions, confirming what I’ve already known and what’s often been repeated to me.”
Eugene has been talking to Stephanie for so long, Rosita says, his room turned into a dump. “She likes you.” But he’s still unsure.
“Do you want to kiss me?” she says to a now bewildered Eugene. “Come on, kiss me. Hurry, before I change my damn mind.”
He moves in. Eugene is almost there, he wants to, and tries to, but backs off. “It’s a special kind of peculiar to hanker for a kiss from someone you’ve never met, isn’t it?” Rosita is surprised, maybe even a little impressed, and Eugene admits now is “not the time to be moaning matters of a forlorn heart.”
“So that’s what we’ll put on your gravestone. ‘Loser with a forlorn heart,’” Rosita tells him. “You know we can’t give them what we want. Those skin freaks would love if we just rolled over. Screw that, and screw them. You like this girl, so get off your ass and go get her.”
Eugene gives Rosita a kiss on the cheek and races off to make a date with Stephanie that will take him and other Hilltop residents on a risky road trip to play out in coming episodes.
In creator Robert Kirkman’s comic books, Eugene and Rosita were in a romantic relationship when she became pregnant with Siddiq’s child. Unlike her live-action counterpart, who delivered baby girl Coco, a pregnant Rosita was among the victims slain by Alpha when the Whisperer leader made an attack against the Kingdom. A devastated Eugene would go on to find happiness with Stephanie, a relationship that lasted for years.
“We see in the comic books that Rosita dies with her head on a pike and that hits Eugene so hard, because he was with her,” McDermitt said when addressing a possible Eugene-Rosita romance during a 2019 convention appearance. “If she had died at this point in the television series, he wasn’t necessarily with her, it would have hit him in a different way. But now that she’s still there, I don’t know, it’s going to be hard for him to move off.”
McDermitt added it would “take a lot” for Eugene to “move off Rosita.” Eugene might finally meet Stephanie in episode 1014, “Look at the Flowers,” premiering Sunday, March 29 on AMC.
New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays on AMC. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
