Viewers have vowed to boycott the new season of The Walking Dead following the season 7 premiere.
The first episode of the series featured more horrifying scenes than usual, and many fans said they were never going to watch the show again.
The zombie drama returned at the beginning of the week with the highly anticipated season opener, but fans were shocked by the amount of blood and gore.
The episode featured shocking death scenes, which showed popular characters getting killed off the show.
Many people took to twitter and promised to boycott the show because of the disturbing scenes.
One person tweeted: “F**K YOU @WalkingDead_AMC NEVER WATCHING AGAIN!…”
And another Walking Dead fan added: “Im [sic] never watching walking dead again. Was already at a downfall last season n now they are trying too hard to keep fans, just lost one here.”
@WalkingDead_AMC about to boycott this show. Not happy with the direction the show is taking at all!
— Stephanie Alarco (@StephanieAlarc3) October 24, 2016
Half was through the new walking dead episode.
I want to cry and vomit simultaneously.
— Bethan Scary Deadley (@musicalbethan) October 24, 2016
Many people took to Twitter to complain about the episode especially the scenes involving Negan, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. They insisted the gore left them feeling sick. One wrote: “I gave up on the walking dead last night. Got too vomit-inducing for me!…”
But, there was a method to the show’s madness. Both Scott Gimple and Robert Kirkman appeared on Talking Dead after Sunday’s premiere, claiming both Abraham and Glenn’s deaths were in the works about two years (via EW):
I think the hardest thing about it was thinking while starting the script, ‘Well, what would break Rick?’ It was all in the book, in issue 100. But looking for a way to break the audience too. Not in a way that is in any way to hurt them, but for them to believe that Rick Grimes would be under the thumb of Negan. That he would go through an experience that would do that to him. That the audience would go through the experience too, so that they would believe that Rick could do what this guy says.
In addition, Steven Yeun claims to have actively lobbied for his own exit:
You read that comic, you kind of don’t want that to go to anyone else. It’s such an iconic moment and I think I even said, ‘Don’t give that to anybody else.’ It’s such a gnarly thing to say but sincerely, living that out was very wild but at the same time, that moment happening and being realized on television in a different medium and to do it in the way that we did it I think is brave and at the same time super affecting. And for me, that was the motivation to be like, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’
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