The Walking Dead actor reveals serial killer plot twist was axed for being too dark
A brutal plot twist from hit drama The Walking Dead was scrapped for being too “dark” for television.
The storyline in question would have arrived in the show’s third season when Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his group were holed up in the prison.
Upon arriving, they encountered five inmates who had survived the zombie outbreak, one of whom – Axel – was played by Lew Temple.
Temple has now revealed that Axel was originally part of a horrific twist ahead of his death that would have seen him “slaughter” Beth Greene, who was played by Emily Kinney up until the fifth season.
“Each episode, the writers would come up to me and say, ‘Look, we’ve got this other thing going down the road. This other thing is going to happen, where you’re not who you’ve been revealing,’” Temple said while speaking on Skybound’s Talk Dead to Me podcast.
Temple said he was told “don’t give too much of that away” and instead played the character with some levity in an attempt to heighten the shock of the twist.
“There were some episodes that were written where I do take Beth out into the woods and slaughter her,” Temple continued, adding: “We didn’t get to any of those.”
He even said that heartwarming scenes showing Axel’s burgeoning friendship with Carol (Melissa McBride) would have seen him end up brutally attacking her in a “dark” twist.
Eventually, the writers told Temple they had scrapped these plans, stating: “No no, we’ve gotta lighten things up a bit – we’ve been pretty dark.”
Temple’s character was then killed off after the writers “painted [themselves] in the corner” with his character.
The final episode of The Walking Dead’s 10th season is yet to be completed due to the global pandemic.
It’s unknown when the finale will air, but the AMC series will return for an 11th run in 2021.
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