If you're a fan of AMC's The Walking Dead, you probably already know how Season 7 began. Negan finally appeared before Rick Grimes and his group of survivors and performed some expert batting practice on Abraham and Glenn's craniums. The Season 7 premiere featured some of the grisliest imagery ever depicted in an installment of The Walking Dead, but viewers in the United Kingdom didn't see everything that American audiences saw when the episode initially aired. As it turns out, those two big deaths during the Season 7 premiere received some pretty thorough edits for UK audiences, which resulted in the removal of some of the worst details.
According to a recent report from Digital Spy, the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead made some notable edits to the deaths of Abraham and Glenn when it aired on FOX in the United Kingdom back in October. The edits primarily involved reducing the duration of the death scenes and shaving off screen time for some of the gorier moments. This also included removing arguably the worst part of the entire episode: Glenn struggling to mutter "I'll find you" to Maggie before Negan finished him off. FOX still aired enough to tell a cohesive story but left out some of the less savory material to abide by UK-specific censorship policies.
Honestly, I am almost jealous of the audiences in the United Kingdom. If I never heard Glenn's final words to Maggie, I would probably have slept much better after the premiere.
That said, audiences in the United Kingdom still eventually got to see the most gruesome elements of the episode. The edits occurred during the initial 9 p.m. broadcast, but later reruns of the episode featured the longer and gorier version of the entire affair that American audiences were able to see the first time around. If UK viewers found themselves disturbed by the edited version, then we can only imagine how they felt when the full version finally debuted.
Despite the edits, certain audience members in the United Kingdom were still incredibly put off by the offensive content and made their voices heard on the matter. However, an investigation conducted by Ofcom (an independent, UK-based regulation board) concluded that FOX was right in its decision to edit the content in The Walking Dead Season 7 premiere. Ofcom officially declared that FOX took the necessary steps to cut out the worst content and adhere to proper standards and practices. The organization backed up its conclusions with the claim that The Walking Dead's levels of violence and gore are already "well-established," and as such viewers knew what to expect when tuning in.
CinemaBlend will bring you any and all relevant details related to The Walking Dead as more information is made available to us. The latter half of Season 7 will debut on Sunday, February 12 at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. For more details related to all of the most highly anticipated spring television debuts, make sure to take a look at our comprehensive midseason premiere guide!
