When The Walking Dead kicks off season seven on Monday, we can expect two questions to be answered.
One, who did Negan kill in the brutal season six finale?
And two, how much goodwill did the show's producers kill with that cliffhanger ending?
Cliffhangers have always been a staple of serial drama, but The Walking Dead has taken them to a new level. With the death of a beloved character always a possibility in this show, ending a season or going to the now-customary mid-season break with the fate of one or more of them in the balance has become a favourite stunt. But not necessarily a popular one.
We went to the last mid-season break with a bunch of survivors slathered in blood and guts wading into a herd of zombies. It was a tactic that had worked before – Rick (Andrew Lincoln) did it in season one – but back then there was no screaming kid in the mix. This time we knew someone would die, we just didn't know who. We had to wait eight weeks to find out.
That was nothing, though, compared to the full season finale in February, in which the charismatic leader of the Saviors, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), finally appeared after weeks of build-up, and told our gang he was going to make an example of one of them in retribution for the carnage Rick and co had meted out on his crew.
He's a handsome devil. But very much a devil. Photo: AMC
He forced 11 of them to kneel in front of him, and played eeny-meeny-miny-mo. "You. Are. It," he said, pointing Lucille, his baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, at the unlucky victim.
We watched, horrified, from said victim's point of view as the bat was raised and brought crashing down on his or her skull. Blood spattered the lens, and the screen faded to black over the ghastly sounds of Negan's repeated clubbing.
We had no idea who was on the end of that almost-certainly fatal clubbing (and we still don't; AMC has kept the episode tightly under wraps). And for many people watching, it was a cliffhanger too far.
Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) ponders which of the 11 he will dispatch with Lucille in the season 6 finale.
Social media tracking firm canvs, which measures emotional responses to television by analysing tweets, found that while the emotional reactions (ERs) to the finale in general were positive, in the closing minutes "the predominant ERs were 'crazy', 'dislike', 'hate' and 'upset'." Those negatives accounted for more than 70 per cent of reactions.
Of course, you could read that negativity as an expression of empathy with the victim. It didn't necessarily mean people felt negative about the direction the story had taken, or the fact we were once again left dangling off a narrative precipice. But in the days and weeks that followed, fans increasingly expressed their anger at the prospect of being forced to wait more than six months for resolution – if, indeed, the show's producers delivered it even then.
In part, what is at stake is the issue of trust. In "killing" the beloved Glenn (Steven Yeun) in the third episode of season six only to bring him back four episodes later, The Walking Dead betrayed one of its core tenets – that no one is indispensable – for the sake of a twist, or perhaps a pandering to sentiment.
Now, though, it has the opportunity to re-establish that founding principle, which has been one of the reasons the show has been both so difficult to watch and so utterly compelling.
There are a multitude of theories among fans about the identity of Negan's victim, but by far the frontrunner is Glenn. After all, that's the way it plays out in the comic-book series on which the show is based.
In The Walking Dead #100, Negan chooses Glenn and beats him to death.
The TV series has often taken its own direction, killing off or preserving characters according to its own narrative logic, so there's no guarantee Glenn will die.
Personally I hope he doesn't. But if it is him on the receiving end of that beating, the show will at least have kept faith with its own premise. It would be devastating, but not in vain.
Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin
