The Walking Dead officially kicked off its seventh season with a bloody and brutal premiere that saw the deaths of two of Rick's group of survivors. Abraham was the unlucky person who ended up with a face full of Lucille after Negan's round of "eeny meeny miney moe," which didn't come as a huge surprise. A bigger shocker came when Negan decided to beat Glenn to death in punishment for Daryl throwing a punch.
As if that wasn't enough, Negan broke Rick when he very nearly forced Rick to chop off his own son's hand. It was a rough hour of TV, and social media has been buzzing with viewer reactions ever since it aired. Fans seem to be going through the five stages of grief in the wake of the premiere, and we've compiled the best of the best of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Read on to see what others thought of the Season 7 premiere.
Denial
Negan pretty thoroughly beat Abraham and Glenn to death. A lot of his scenes even featured bloody chunks of flesh flying off the end of his bat as he gleefully gestured at the survivors. There was no question that the deeds were done. Still, it was much easier for some of us to deny what we saw than actually accept what had happened.
Just as Daryl couldn't deal with what happened to Merle way back in Season 1, some on social media just couldn't process that their favorite had been bashed off to the great zombie apocalypse sanctuary in the sky.
Of course, the dead weren't the only victims in the Season 7 premiere. Poor Maggie lost another loved one. As if possibly miscarrying wasn't bad enough!
Even those of us who might have been spoiled or spent our whole summers speculating weren't necessarily ready for what we saw in the premiere.
Who knows what it will take for everybody to start feeling again?
Anger
For those who made it past the first stage of denial, anger was next, and why shouldn't we be angry? We waited all summer to see our beloved characters back in action, and most of the action they faced was either weeping into the dirt or being whacked to death by a baseball bat in front of their loved ones. Viewers had every right to be mad.
The picture of Steven Yeun flipping off a camera is a pretty good representation of what a lot of people were probably thinking after the final credits of the Season 7 premiere.
The kind of anger provoked by this particular episode isn't necessarily a kind that abates overnight. Waking to discover that it wasn't a weirdly specific nightmare must have been enough to make some folks mad all over again.
Hopefully those who are most angry will find understanding people on social media. Those who don't watch The Walking Dead just can't understand the pain of what transpired last night.
Bargaining
After anger comes bargaining. For those who have managed to get past denying the pain and raging at the show, the time came to try and find a way to deal with the pain.
Certain viewers just had to trade one priority for another. Yes, school is important, but who can write reports when their soul is dying from zombie apocalypse pain?
Glenn and Abraham may have technically been fictional characters, but they still felt real to plenty of viewers.
Maybe telling ourselves that the bigger picture of humanity is what really matters from now on will make the losses feel less devastating. People are always going to die onThe Walking Dead. Was this so bad?
Yeah, it was pretty bad. It's reasonable to take a break for a while, whether it's just avoiding thinking about the show for the next six days or skipping the next few episodes.
Depression
Once the tragedies of the Season 7 premiere have finally sunk in despite our best efforts to bargain them away, the time will come for depression. An awful lot of people seem to already be feeling this stage.
The loss of Glenn means that the original group of Atlanta survivors is down to four: Rick, Carl, Carol, and Daryl.
A direct approach to the Walking Dead depression can be a good thing. Why hide your tears when you can tweet a picture to express yourself?
At least social media can let each and every one of us know that we're not alone.
Good old Abraham could be excellent at expressing himself.
Acceptance
Finally, there comes acceptance. Not everybody who caught the premiere may have worked their way to the acceptance stage just yet, but it's encouraging to know that some have.
The ability to look objectively back at what happened should be helpful to the Walking Dead recovery period.
Perspective of the wider world beyond the pain of the finale is a good step to healing.
Acknowledgment of a ripped heart is an important step toward healing it.
Therapy may not be a bad idea for some of us.
As it turns out, the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead was the most tweeted TV episode of 2016, aside from sporting and other special events. There were more than 4.5 million tweets, with the peak at 9:30 p.m. ET when poor Glenn got an up close and personal look at Lucille. Here are a few of the most popular tweets of the night:
Hopefully we're all feeling better today than this person was feeling last night.
Maybe we should have listened to Supernatural fans when they tried to warn that Jeffrey Dean Morgan doesn't play the nicest characters when he wields a baseball bat.
R.I.P. Glenn and Abraham. You may not have gotten the dignified deaths that you deserved, but at least you got a lot of tweets about them.
Tune in to AMC on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET to see what's next for Rick and Co. on The Walking Dead. Hopefully the Season 7 premiere will be the only one to take us through the stages of grief for the near future.
