The Walking Dead Didn’t Originally End With [Spoiler’s] Death

Warning: this story contains spoilers for The Walking Dead series finale. The final victim to die on The Walking Dead almost made it out alive. The last episode of the zombie drama, titled “Rest in Peace,” opened with Luke (Dan Fogler) and Jules (Alex Sgambati) as casualties of the walker horde that descended on the lower ward of the Commonwealth. While the trio of Rosita (Christian Serratos), Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) was able to rescue Rosita’s baby Coco from the overrun children’s home, the group found themselves swarmed by the horde and trapped in a hospital alleyway.

Facing the same fate as Luke and Jules, Gabriel and Eugene managed to scramble to safety by scaling a pipe into an open window. When Rosita tried to climb up with her daughter in her arms, she fell into a mass of teeth and clawing fingers below — only to fight her way out, mount an ambulance, and leap onto the pipe she climbed to save her daughter.

While Coco made it out unscathed, Rosita was less fortunate. She privately revealed to Eugene a walker’s bite on her shoulder, which would prove fatal. Rosita slowly succumbed to the infection and died peacefully, surrounded by friends and family.

Executive producer and episode director Greg Nicotero told ComicBook that Rosita’s finale fate was pitched by Serratos, who had been with the show since Season 4 and wanted to leave the show with closure. In an interview with the AMC Blog, showrunner and episode story writer Angela Kang revealed there was a version where Rosita survived The Walking Dead finale.

“Christian Serratos and I had a conversation and she said, ‘I think that the right endpoint for Rosita is that she dies in service of making sure that her child lives.’ That’s something that felt important to Christian,” Kang said. “I wasn’t going to kill her at first, but I understood what her point of view was. We continued to talk, and it was just a really good dialogue between us.”

Rosita’s final moments are spent with best friend Eugene, who is at Rosita’s bedside as she slips away after one last goodbye between mother and daughter. 

“I think Christian gives this beautiful performance in the finale,” Kang said. “I cried when she was doing the scene with Eugene where he figures out that she’s been bitten, and I think both of them did such a beautiful, beautiful job. I think Christian is an incredible actor and she really brought it.”

Kang continued: “For those fans that are heartbroken about this character’s death, I hope they know this was something that the whole Walking Dead family were in agreement on. It’s not something that was imposed upon anybody.”

The Walking Dead‘s “Rest in Peace” series finale is now streaming on AMC+.

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