“The Walking Dead’s” Steven Yeun still has a lot of feelings about Glenn’s death, and we’re crying all over again

Many months later, fans of The Walking Dead are still devastated by Glenn’s death.

For those of you who don’t remember (or blocked it out of your memory because it’s just too sad to handle), Glenn died at the unfortunate end of Negan’s bat. The gruesome death was not well received either. At the time, 70% of all reactions on Twitter were negative and filled with words like “crazy,” “dislike,” “hate,” and “upset.” And actor Andrew Lincoln said that the death was meant to make viewers feel “sick,” “angry,” and “frustrated.” Apparently, Glenn himself felt a lot of that too — and is still conflicted over the whole thing.

Steven Yeun, the actor behind the #GONETOOSOON character, admitted he still has a lot of feelings about Glenn’s death.

"I don’t feel like it was too much. I’ll be honest with you and put a full disclaimer here: I might not be objective, but I truly feel like people didn’t know what to do with Glenn," he told Vulture. "They liked him, they had no problems with him, and people enjoyed him. But, they didn’t acknowledge the connection people had with the character until he was gone."

Yeun admits that Glenn’s death wasn’t even as gory as usual for the show. Nonetheless, he said, “this one felt gratuitous because one, it kept going, and two, I think they took away someone that I didn’t realize I had made such a connection with until they took him away.”

Yeun also believes that Glenn was treated kind of unfairly on the show.

"I loved being on that show. Internally, it was incredible. Externally, it was tough sometimes because I never felt like he got his fair due," he said. "I never felt like he got it from an outward perception. I don’t say this as a knock on anything. He always had to be part of something else to legitimize himself. He was rarely alone. And when he was alone, it took several years to convince people to be on his own."

In a show like The Walking Dead, we know characters, major or otherwise, are never safe. But, Glenn’s death still hit us pretty hard. Yeun believes some of the shock came from the fact that there aren’t enough Asians onscreen to even have violent deaths.

“It’s interesting to think about it that way,” he said when asked if his character’s death was potentially racist. “I don’t think there was any more violence inflicted on him because he was Asian. I think they would have done the same thing. Maybe it’s something to be said that you’ve never seen an Asian character die like that onscreen before — because we don’t have Asian people onscreen to die! Even when we do die, we die silently.”

Since The Walking Dead,Yeun has kept busy with projects like Netflix’s Okja. Head on over to Vulture for more on what he’s been up to.