The Walking Dead Star Reacts to Surprise Death (Exclusive)

By Cameron Bonomolo

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Sunday's "A New Deal" episode of The Walking Dead. "Do you think people are born brave? Or do they become it?" Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) deliberates on the final episodes of The Walking Dead. No longer the mulleted coward and liar who once truthfully confessed he is "not combat ready, or for that matter, combat inclined," Eugene has become a confident and capable walker-killer. But that may come back to bite him as the man who used to run away from the undead instead ran headfirst into danger, saving beloved girlfriend Max (Margot Bingham) from a walker after a shove from a scorned Sebastian Milton (Teo Rapp-Olsson).

The couple worked together to publicly expose the spoiled son of Commonwealth Governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins), airing a recording of Sebastian's sneering and thumb-nosing toward the community's poor in what was supposed to be a speech of unity on Founders Day. As chaos broke out from a pack of walkers that breached the Commonwealth's walls, Sebastian attempted to rid himself of whistle-blower Max when he hurled her into the path of a chomping biter.

But Eugene raced to the rescue, throwing himself into harm's way and knocking the walker off Max. As fate would have it, the tackle sent the walker toppling onto Sebastian, who was pinned down and suffered a fatal bite before bleeding out and dying in front of a crowd of onlookers.

"He'd be unrecognizable, 100%," McDermitt exclusively told ComicBook when asked how the Eugene of Season 4 might react to the Eugene of Season 11, whose bravery inadvertently caused Sebastian's death. "I wouldn't even call him timid. He [used to run] in the opposite direction when he saw a walker."

McDermitt recalled the group's escape from Terminus in the Season 5 premiere, "No Sanctuary," when a fleeing Eugene evaded a walker ultimately put down by Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green).

"Sonequa sent me a GIF of us running out of the train car, and there was a zombie reaching for Eugene, and Eugene's just doing one of these [juke motions]," McDermitt said. "And then she comes up and shoots the walker through the brain, and I thought that was so funny."

For McDermitt, that represents "how far this man has come that he's not running to get away from a walker, but he's actually getting his hands dirty and pushing a walker into someone and them dying and him saying, 'Well, them's the breaks.' [Eugene is] unrecognizable at this point."

As for Sebastian actor Rapp-Olsson, who spoke to ComicBook for an exclusive post-mortem, there are no hard feelings. 

"Josh McDermitt is one of my favorite human beings in the world. He was the first person who really invited me to the show and to the family, and from day one has always made me feel like part of the family," Rapp-Olsson said. "So I was actually very, very happy and grateful that he was there on the last day with that and could literally be the man who feeds me to that walker."

Follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for TWD Universe coverage all season long. New episodes of The Walking Dead's final season premiere Sundays on AMC and AMC+.

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