Ben Franklin wrote, "Fish and visitors smell after three days." The main core of survivors from The Walking Dead's zombie apocalypse are heading into their seventh year wandering the South's backwoods and blown-out cities, so it's fairly safe to say they smell a whole lot worse than they would at three days. The stress of surviving and, later in Alexandria, putting away survival instincts in order to start rebuilding, can bring out the best and worst in a person. We've seen many of these characters at their best, and their worst.
Sometimes the worst of a character makes them more unlikable or unrelatable than we want for the heroes of our story. Sometimes the best of a character just isn't good enough to give us a true rooting interest in them. Part of the draw of the series initially was that no one was safe. As ruin our lives entirely.
For spoiler purposes, we'll assume you're caught up to the Season 6 finale.
15. Heath
The biggest reason for his inclusion on this list, ironically, is also his biggest argument for not being on the list. We don't know a very good way to say this politely, so we'll just come out with it: Heath hasn't shown us enough in the time he's been on the show to be worth keeping around. Heath has been built up to be a character with a large role on the show, but it's pretty difficult to come up with anything memorable that he's done or said. This might be a red flag for Heath, as he has ed Tara out on a supply run last time we saw him. That is to say that his lack of a defined and well-rounded personality on the show might make him the equivalent of a glorified 'red shirt' in Star Trek... someone worth having around to kill off that means more than just an extra, but won't result in the showrunners receiving death threats on Twitter.
While obviously the comics are a different animal than the show, the fact that Heath is more developed on the page (not to mention still alive) gives us hope that he'll be used better in Season 7.
14. Daryl Dixon
Don't get us wrong: we LOVE Daryl. Norman Reedus' biker-with-a-heart-of-gold character was probably the breakout star of the entire series, winning over fans skeptical of a character that didn't even exist in the comics. So why wouldn't Daryl's demise kill us on the inside? Let's answer that with another question: what more does Daryl have to give us on the show? His character arc started with him as an outsider and a potential hazard when his brother, Merle, was left for dead in Atlanta. As time marched on, his contributions to and bonds with the group strengthened with each ing season.
We've seen him be a great secondary leader. We've seen him be a commando and a stealth weapon. We've seen him at his most vulnerable. We've seen him break away and go off on his own. We've seen him just about every which way we can, short of the show completely jumping the shark with his character. We thank Daryl for his contributions, but we accept that it may be an inevitability that his time has come. As one of the survivors left kneeling before Negan and his bat, Lucille, he may well not last another full episode. And really, what better way of thanking Norman and Daryl for his/their contributions to the show and our lives than by giving him the most dramatic exit possible?
13. Eugene Porter
The character of Eugene has walked a very perilous tightrope in his time on the show. Had he stayed the cartoonishly cowardly autism spectrum liar (and peeping tom) that he'd started out as, fans would have been sick of his antics fairly quickly. But a great drama leaves ample room for character growth, and we've seen that with the heroics and initiative Eugene has displayed recently. His bravado, and how he has conveyed the 'new and improved Eugene' to Abraham has been pretty damn funny. This development, however, will also wear thin fairly quickly if his character doesn't continue to evolve.
Should Eugene manage to evade the wrath of Lucille, it seems very likely that the incident will have a profound effect on Eugene and his psyche. The lingering question is, however, how long will we be able to stomach the fallout from Eugene's latest brush with death?
In the comics, Eugene has taken up residence in something that is almost a parallel story... where his actions and motivations are allowed to breathe and create a level of intrigue that keeps us engaged. If the show can't find that sort of balance for him shortly, just as quickly as we all fell in love with the mullet, we may find ourselves calling for the show to get a haircut.
12. Gregory
We've only gotten to know Gregory in the show for a short while. The leader of the Hilltop Colony settlement, he made it abundantly clear very early on that, while not exactly a bad guy, he is eminently unlikable. It's a credit to actor Xander Berkeley and the writers of the show that Gregory has put such a bad taste in our mouths in such a short span of time.
Unlike the previous entries, we simply won't mind Gregory meeting his maker simply because he's a jerk. The reason for Gregory being this low on the list, though, is because we feel that there is much more drama to play out involving this man and his motivations. As the world of men grows larger in Season 7, seeing how the leaders of this world interact and compare to one another will be one of the most fascinating aspects of the show. And so, despite the fact that Gregory's end would bring us no small amount of pleasure, we are curious to see what the creative minds behind the show have in store for "the boss".
11. Carl Grimes
We'll wait for you to stop gasping in shock/awe/disgust. We've seen little Carl grow up among the dead over these last 6 years. While he started as a young boy in constant need of rescue, he has matured and become a contributor -- every bit as much as the adults. Unfortunately, it's also given the Grimes boy a bit of an attitude that's veering towards insufferable. While the actions of that punk Ron were inexcusable, it's not like Carl and his patronizing tone and actions helped the kid's rage problems any (you know, that and Carl's dad killing Ron's dad).
Headed into Season 7, it looks like that's the Carl that we've got in store for us. And really, what better way to show that nobody is safe... and to throw Rick into a justifiable dramatic malaise than losing his boy? We would never condone the killing of children, even fictional ones, but if Carl goes to meet his maker this season, we won't be wearing black for long.
10. Simon
Oooh.... have you ever been so mad at a fictional character before for being good at what he does? Simon serves as Negan's right hand man in guiding the Saviors, and there's just something the character exudes that makes you want to see him get his comeuppance even more than Negan himself. That is most definitely a credit to the distinctive voice, sinister look, and great acting of actor Steven Ogg; and it's very probable that all those things led him to being cast as co-lead Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V.
Negan may very well be the greatest character ever created in the history of fiction (take that, Batman!), and so we're super pumped to see what the show has in store for him and how it differs from the comics. We don't have that same attachment to Simon, or at least, not yet. Right now, we're just angry. Right now, he's just a bad guy (an effective bad guy, but still). We're looking forward to Season 7 convincing us to begrudgingly drop him from this list.
9. Tara Chambler
The character of Tara came to us through such a weird little outcropping of story. For those of you that don't , it was Tara and her family that took in The Governor after he'd lost control of Woodbury... believing him to be a good guy. Tara and her naivete seem a tad out of place in the middle of the end of the world. While her character has grown, it feels almost as though her likability has been foisted upon us. And it's worked... but not enough to save her from this list.
The sad truth of the matter is that a show about a zombie outbreak that's taken over the world can't keep every good-natured character around forever. Someone has to fall in order to keep things interesting and dynamic. When going down the list of people who seem the least essential, she finds herself pretty far up on the expendable side. She never did anything wrong to the point where we resent Tara, but them's the breaks. That she and Heath have broken off from the main group on a supply run, seemingly escaping the wrath of Negan, sets up a good parallel story where we can bond more with Miss Chambler, and then maybe wish her a fond farewell.
8. Abraham Ford
The Walking Dead works best when the survivors are fighting for their lives. In order to make the threats viably threatening with an ever-more-resourceful group of survivors, the threats have to become consistently 'bigger and badder'. Abraham Ford, who has actual military fighting experience and has battled all the way from Texas in the zombie apocalypse, tips the scales so hard that the threats are forced to be big spectacles. Abraham is a symbol of power for Rick and company in that he is such a capable fighter, and yet he still finds himself surprisingly low on the totem pole of the group. His vulgar and folksy sayings have been getting more convoluted, and are beginning to sound just as made up as slang invented by David Mamet. And, given Abraham's 'suicide by recklessness' phase followed by his subsequent attempt to play house with Sasha, we'd say he's just about primed for a ceremonious, and messy, exit. That he is maybe the most hardened of the group will go a long way to showing that all the training and preparation in the world doesn't mean much when you're at the end of it.
7. Gabriel Stokes
Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel. That he'd survived as long as he had after the dead came back is a nothing more than a testament to how cowardly he'd been. It is pretty tough to feel sorry for a shepherd that has turned his back on his flock. Compounding that, he was saved time and again by Rick and company... and how does he repay it? By turning on Rick and the rest of the group and selling them out in Alexandria. Sure, he seems to be coming around and is now looking to do his part, but if you ask us, it's too little and too late.
It will certainly be interesting to see how his character develops as the season goes on. How will he cope with the Saviors and a more human-faced threat? Previously, he assumed Rick's group was detestable for massacring the Terminus folks... and they were cannibals. The Wolves seemed almost more beast than man (hence the name), and so Gabriel seemed less troubled by their demise. The Saviors, however, look to be just a group of folks surviving and thriving in the cold and harsh reality they've been presented with, albeit with a sadistic streak. Will he again take up his stance that killing is wrong? The fact that Gabriel is played by Seth Gilliam, the badass bug killer Sugar from Starship Troopers, only holds so much weight. Gabriel must atone for his sins; and he must atone for them in blood.
6. Sasha Williams
Sasha has made her way back from the brink more than once since she entered our lives. For a time, it seemed that losing her brother, Tyreese, and her main squeeze, Bob, would be more than she could handle. It is nice to see her back to being a human being, so to speak. But Sasha's petulance and brash behavior, and even her more recent mishandling of Abraham's voiced affection, isn't exactly exactly a recipe for audience endearment.
While we can't begin to imagine what it must be like to lose so many people that you've loved, we find it hard to believe that it would cause someone to act out like a toddler throwing a perpetual temper tantrum. The reality of this show is that people that we grow accustomed to seeing on a weekly basis will exit the show in gruesome and horrific ways. Many of them will cause us to weep or shudder or yell out in anger and disbelief (Noah and Beth come to mind off the top of our heads). Something tells us that if Sasha becomes one of the casualties of the program, we might not be shedding the same amount of tears over her departure.