Arkansas paper publishes obituary for beloved fictional character from 'The Walking Dead'
Spoiler Alert! This story contains some heavy-hitting details about the season seven premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead.
BATESVILLE, AR (WMBF) - Rest in Peace Glenn Rhee. Some are taking the passing of everyone’s favorite pizza-boy-turned-zombie-warrior pretty hard, including a newspaper editor who wrote up an obituary for the fictional charter.
“Glenn Rhee, husband, father-to-be, warrior and friend departed from this world October 23rd. He was 32,” the obituary begins. “Born and raised in Michigan to Korean immigrant parents, he settled in Atlanta to undertake his career of delivering pizzas and brightening the world around him until the unthinkable happened – the Walker Apocalypse. It was then that the real Glenn emerged; a man of impeccable moral grounding and logistical wizardry.”
The obit, written by Frank Vaughn of the Batesville Daily Guard, was published Tuesday in the Arkansas paper’s opinion column. Managing editor Andrea Bruner was “too depressed to write a column,” after the brutal death of one of her favorite TV characters, and opted to publish the tribute, which has since gone viral.
“It was meant as a bit of brevity during this exhaustive election cycle, a break from the hard news of the day,” said Bruner in an e-mail to the Raycom News Network. She made sure to point out that it was printed in the paper’s opinion page, and was not intended to be taken seriously. Bruner also wanted to make clear that The Batesville Daily Guard is a real paper that has been in business for over 140 years. Apparently, another media source reporting on the obituary implied that the family-owned daily newspaper was not real.
Glenn Rhee, played by Steven Yeun, was one of the few original survivors from the very beginning of the long-running series. He was brutally and unexpectedly beaten to death in the premiere episode by the show’s newest villain, Negan, who wields a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire and is played contemptibly by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
The obituary continues: “He is survived in death by his loving wife Maggie and their unborn child; Rick, Carl and Judith Grimes; Carol Peletier; Daryl Dixon; the Warrior Woman known only as Michonne; and various other adoptive family members and associates that will likely be more memorable in their eventual deaths than they ever were in life.”
A noticeable omission from the tongue-in-cheek tribute is the death of fan favorite Abraham, who also met his end by way of Negan’s bat Sunday night.
Instead, it closes: “In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations of LITERALLY ANYONE WHO CAN HELP THEM DEFEAT NEGAN be made in his memory.”
Those who want a permanent copy of this touching tribute to a
fictional character who doesn’t really exist can call the Batesville Daily Guard offices at 1-870-793-2383 to make arrangements to have a copy of the paper mailed to them.
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Looks like this season is going to be epic and a whole new direction for the show.
