The Walking Dead Director Explains Rosita Shocker (Exclusive)

Warning: this story contains spoilers from The Walking Dead series finale, "Rest in Peace." Here lies the final victim of The Walking Dead. Sunday's "Rest in Peace" series finale not only laid to rest the AMC zombie drama after 11 seasons, but bid farewell to one of the show's main characters: Rosita Espinosa (Christian Serratos). Introduced in the Season 4 episode "Inmates" in 2014, the trio of Rosita, Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz), and Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) is down to one. The final episode revealed Rosita had been bit by a walker, only to have her slowly succumb to the fatal bite before peacefully passing on as the last death on The Walking Dead.

"Dying is simple. It all just stops. You're dead," Rosita told now-BFF Eugene back in Season 6. "The people around you dying, that's the hard part. Because you keep living knowing that they're gone, and you're still here. What you should be scared of is living knowing that you didn't do everything you could to keep them here."

But Rosita died as she lived: doing everything she could to save her daughter, Baby Coco. The finale saw Rosita, Eugene, and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) fighting their way through the zombie-overrun streets of the Commonwealth's lower wards, where Governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins) had rerouted an invading walker horde. After rescuing Coco and other kidnapped kids from the city children's home, the trio's escape route through an alley found them swarmed by walkers with no way out except by climbing a wall pipe to safety.

While it appeared that mother and daughter met their end while engulfed by walkers, Rosita emerged from the horde, seemingly unscathed. Rosita later revealed her zombie-bitten shoulder to Eugene, her last wish to spend what time she had left with her loved ones before dying from the infection.

In an exclusive interview, director Greg Nicotero explained to ComicBook that The Walking Dead killed off Rosita because Serratos requested a heroic end and legacy for her character.

"Well, Christian, I remember almost a year ago she came and sat in my office and she said, 'Look, I really want something big for Rosita. I want something for my character to sink her teeth into,'" Nicotero said. "And she had been playing around with the idea of proposing that, 'Does she die?' And she said, 'I want to go out, I want it to be heroic, I want to be saving the children. I want to do something that leaves my character with a legacy.'"

The episode is a sendoff for Rosita as much as it is for The Walking Dead, its final minutes honoring both the living and the dead from its 11 seasons. 

"She was really, really proud of that. And we worked really, really hard to make sure that we honored that idea. And on the show, there haven't been a lot of people that have stepped up and said, 'I want to be killed off the show,'" the director said. "But at this particular instance, she wanted to do it because she wanted her character to have a great story and a great legacy. And I think she did an amazing job. Between her, and Seth, and Josh, and everybody around her that just made that moment sing."

After attending one last family dinner, Rosita gets an emotional series of goodbyes on her deathbed. Gabriel prays for her and offers her comfort: "We'll see you again someday." She soaks in her daughter one last time. In the end, Eugene is by Rosita's side as she slips away. "I wouldn't be the man I am today if I hadn't met you," a teary Eugene tells her. Rosita responds, "I'm glad it was you in the end."

"I'm so proud of her, and we worked really, really hard on those sequences to make sure that she was getting what she wanted for the character, and that we were paying respects to her," Nicotero said. "Because in essence, she really represents so many other people that died on the show. And that was something that was important, that we got a chance to really do it and do it the way we wanted to."

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