‘The Walking Dead’ Star Tovah Feldshuh Talks Last Night’s Midseason Finale

SPOILERS AHEAD! If there’s one thing you can count on when watching The Walking Dead, it’s that there will be some sort of traumatic character death in the show’s midseason finale.

Last night was no different as Alexandria leader Deanna Monrow (played by Tovah Feldshuh) was bitten causing her to have to deal with being infected as a horde of zombies descended upon her town, as well as the house she was holed up in. Deanna said her goodbyes and came to terms with her fate, but instead of choosing to end her life with a bullet, she chose to take as many zombies down as she could first, before becoming food.

Feldshuh chatted with Entertainment Weekly about her character’s fate, including why she chose to go out the way she did and what was in the note to Maggie that she left behind to pass aong.

On why Deanna chose not to take her own life at the end

“Her thinking there is, what’s the greater good? And it’s better even if you only have five bullets left in your gun barrel to kill five walkers and five of the enemy and sacrifice herself, because clearly we believe she would get mauled. She would have to be a superwoman to survive all this, and then maybe she dies on her own. She sacrifices the dignity of a bullet death for the probably much more painful death of being eaten by these horrendous people. And when she can no longer fight with bullets, she fights with screams. That’s not a scream of terror. That’s a samurai scream.”

On what was in the note for Maggie

“And what I wrote to Maggie is that this is her chance to step up to the plate, to become me as much as she can in terms of her belief of due process of law. She has all the skills, she has the gun skills, she has the legs, she’s going to have a child. There is going to be someone beside Judith that is new fresh life in the community. She’s the one who has the balanced path and the balanced abilities to become the leader of state, and not to forget that. So between her and Michonne I have a Plan A and a Plan B. In a way, because Maggie is pregnant, Michonne may be my best shot. Remember, I give Michonne my plans. She ends up with my plans. And though the physical entity of Alexandria may or may not go up in smoke, the principles that I brought to bear in Alexandria I believe will go forth.”

On the alternate-Deanna storylines she pitched

“I thought she should try to interconnect the various pods of humanity. She would have to find another Alexandria. Nobody knows whether we’re completely alone out there. We know we’re not. There have to be other pods of survivors. It’s beyond comprehension that every decent human being is dead. I wanted Rick to be my brawn, to be my Colin Powell, to be my great general, and I wanted to be the political brains behind a building web linking one decent community to another, even if it was just a dozen people. And somehow we would do away with this walker situation. My other idea is that even though I have been bitten, I’m the one with the cure. It’s in the blood. I’m the one with the immune ability somehow to survive it. But that’s yet to be seen.”

What did you think of last night’s midseason finale? Were you sad to see Deanna go? Talk to us in the comments below.

Photo Credit: AMC