Following his introduction back in season 4 of The Walking Dead, the tough-as-nails Abraham Ford quickly became a firm fan-favorite thanks to his fearless nature and creatively vulgar quips, and because of this, his violent murder at the hands of Negan in the season 7 premiere was very difficult to watch.
Though readers of Robert Kirkman’s source material probably had a pretty good idea that Ford was on the chopping block, the manner in which he was dispatched (some felt it was a waste of a great character just to set up the even more shocking Glen execution), was a tough pill to swallow for many viewers.
Still, as difficult as these kinds of things can be on fans, imagine how the now out-of-work cast members feel. While speaking at this year’s Walker Stalker Cruise, Michael Cudlitz recalls the exact moment he guessed correctly that his time on the show was coming to an end.
I was up visiting my son at college and I got a phone call, ‘Scott wants to meet with you next week when you come back. Scott hadn’t met with me in two years. I was like, alright, I’m dead. Let’s call Scott and confirm this. So I called Scott and said, ‘Hey, uh, we’re supposed to have this meeting next Tuesday. Are you killing me?’ He said, ‘Ha! Ha! Why would you? Ha! Well… maybe.
Unsubtle, perhaps, but Cudlitz adds that he had a feeling Abraham would be killed off soon anyway since the character died at an earlier point in the comic books. The actor also addressed fan concerns that Abe’s death was a last-minute decision to deflect attention from Glen’s far more shocking bludgeoning, revealing that it was always the plan for those two specific characters to bite the big one upon the introduction of Negan.
While we definitely miss Abe, with all-out war in the cards when we return to The Walking Dead on February 12th, fans might well have some new characters to mourn soon enough.
