The Walking Dead: 6 Things "Coda" Got Right (And 4 It Didn't)

2. RIP Beth

There's no more dancing around this, is there. People die in The Walking Dead all the time. A handful of long-time cast members have already popped their clogs this series. The writers did a very good job as directing attention away from Beth, though. After all, if they'd wanted to kill her off, they could easily have done that for the half a season she was absent, having been taken off in that white cross van somewhere in the middle of season four. Why not just kill her off screen? Why take the time to bring her back, use her to introduce an entirely new environment and set of characters, and have the majority of this season so far focused on her escape and/or rescue? Because the people who make The Walking Dead are sadists, that's why. See, they enjoy toying with the audience's emotions, those monsters. Beth's storyline was one of the strongest, and the character felt like she'd really found her feet when left to her own devices, using her wits to try and manoeuvre herself around the hospital until she could bust herself out. All of which made it that much more devastating when Dawn killed her €“ and the fact that she pulled the trigger on Beth by accident only served to make the whole thing that much more heartbreaking. So sure, character deaths in The Walking Dead are a dime a dozen, but none of them have hit quite so hard as this one. Nobody wants to see Daryl cry, after all.