Spoilers below for The Walking Dead's latest episodes, as well as potential spoilers for the future.
By the next episode of The Walking Dead, it will have been a full four weeks since that skull-demolisher of a season premiere, and the drama has wisely kept all of the good guys physically intact over the last few episodes, while breaking them all down mentally. Something happened in "Service," though, that indicates one character has driven onto the highway to hellish death scenes, and I don't imagine that the post-apocalyptic world will be long for one Spencer Monroe. Why make such a gutsy prediction? (That's a pun you'll get later.)
One part of it, of course, relies on going back to Robert Kirkman's comic book source material, while the other side of it is just looking at how unimportant Spencer is, both to anyone else and within his own thinly threaded storyline. Which isn't a knock on actor Austin Nichols or anyone, since it's almost necessary for the character to take a backseat to the abundance of more established survivors already milling about. Spencer just isn't meant to extend the Monroe family tree into the future. And it's the manner in which he goes out in the comics that should have gorehounds happy.
I won't go fully into detail on how things play out for Spencer, since it's likely to happen close to the same way it did in the comics. But his mistrust of Rick's stunted leadership under Negan's thumb will probably lead him to his last mistake, which ends with all of his insides falling out of his stomach, in one of the more brutal and spontaneous deaths on the page.
After watching Abraham and Glenn gets their noggins all swollen and pulverized, I imagine some Walking Dead fans would be okay if the only big nasty effects moments happened to prime antagonists and walkers, but that's not how this show works. The rest of us, in the meantime, are always looking for some great kill scenes to hoot and holler at, and Spencer's death could be the equivalent to Dale's disemboweling, only in an upright position that gravity isn't very kind to. Hope he's wearing old shoes.
To play the devil's advocate for a sec, it's entirely possible that Spencer won't expand on his Rick-based issues and he'll become an important and quick-thinking member of the community, in the same way that Father Gabriel has. (Just with a less creepy smile.) But I might actually believe all that had Spencer gotten some other major comic book arc after his introduction, but the TV version has had even less to do than his two-dimensional counterpart. I'll go ahead and send my R.I.P. flowers to Alexandria now.
With a potentially bloody visit to the Hilltop coming soon, The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC. Head over to our fall TV schedule and midseason schedule to see what's coming soon to a small screen near you.
