An Open Letter To The Walking Dead: Choose Life

As Sunday's return of The Walking Dead approaches, we'd like to make a request of the powers that be: Stop killing off your original characters.

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It's already too late to save any other casualties of this season — the last eight episodes are in the can. But thinking ahead to Season 5 and beyond, could you maybe reevaluate the investment that viewers have in the originals? It shouldn't take long — there are only five left: Rick, Carl, Glenn, Daryl and Carol.

We ask this not because we don't like the newer characters — we like some (Tyreese and Sasha) and actually love others (Maggie and Michonne). But, because we survived the birth of the zombie nation with the originals, we feel like we've walked a long road with them, fought with them, struggled with them, wept with them...

In a sense, they represent us to us.

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So, if we aren't just connected to them, we are them, you can imagine how off-putting it might be to us to be told, "Nope, this new world is hopeless. Your TV counterpart is walker food." You're not just severing our tie to a character, you're severing our tie to ourselves (and, in one fell swoop, to the show).

Just think about it, okay?