Steven Yeun on The Walking Dead Return: The Door Is “Slammed Shut”

There are still eight episodes until the end of The Walking Dead, but don’t expect to see Glenn one last time. Steven Yeun, who starred on the first six seasons of the AMC zombie drama, is ruling out a return to The Walking Dead Universe as Glenn Rhee. Like his comic book counterpart, Glenn’s fate was to be the victim of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), killed by the villain’s blood-thirsty baseball bat in the show’s Season 7 premiere. Unlike Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz) — the episode’s other victim who reappeared in a dream sequence later that season — Glenn has yet to return to the show in a flashback or cameo from beyond the grave.

And according to Yeun, Glenn never will. While promoting Jordan Peele’s Nope movie on host Conan O’Brien’s Conan Needs a Friend, Yeun recalled meeting two fans who asked, “Did [The Walking Dead] kill you off, or did you want to leave?” 

Yeun answered it was “complicated,” telling O’Brien, “Sometimes, you just accept what it is and you go with it. There’s no tension behind it.” Because Glenn suffered the same fate in issue #100 of Robert Kirkman’s comic book, Yeun explained, “You’re like, ‘OK.’ … I’m not gonna go kicking and screaming.” 

While The Walking Dead sometimes brings back dead characters as hallucinations, Yeun has no interest in reprising the role, either in flashback or in a Glenn prequel. (Yeun explained in 2018: “Sometimes people pitch to me, ‘Dude, wouldn’t it be so cool if you did a Glenn origin movie?’ And I’m like, ‘No, that’d be horrible.’ That was so long ago. I was another person. I don’t think I could go back there.”) 

“The police voice in my head said, ‘If you do it again, you’re a hack,’” he told O’Brien. “So, I don’t do it again. I cringe [at the thought].”

When O’Brien noted that “it’s not like Glenn could come back and go, ‘I’ve got a terrible headache, and my eye is knocked out, but I think I’m OK,’” Yeun said he was thankful for the finality of Glenn’s death.

“Those are the blessings I think I’ve got in my life,” Yeun said. “An absolute door shut. There’s not like a crack in the door. It is slammed shut, and barricaded.” 

AMC will soon release the first season of spinoff Tales of the Walking Dead, an episodic anthology series focused on new and established characters within the walker apocalypse — including ones who have already died. Premiering August 14, Tales features an origin story for Alpha of the Whisperers (Samantha Morton) after she was killed off in a Season 10 episode of The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead returns with the final eight episodes on AMC and AMC+ this October.

Follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for TWD Universe coverage all season long.