Walking Dead star slams fans over season 6 cliff-hanger criticism: is he right?

The stars of The Walking Dead have become pretty damn good at playing the hype game over the years, promising that each season is going to be better than next. “It’s going to explode your brain” they say! “It’s going to be the end of the world as we know it”! “The next season will make you sell your children for food and go and live in the woods with nothing but a shotgun for company”, they claim.

Well, not quite, but they do like to unleash the hyperbole from time to time to get fans drooling like a walker with some fresh meat being dangled in front of it.

So it’s refreshing to hear the guy who plays Jesus on the show, Tom Payne, taking a different tactic while talking about the upcoming season 7 of The Walking Dead. He’s not terribly impressed by all the fans that have been whinging about the season 6 cliff-hanger in which Negan’s barbed wire baseball bat was left smashing into the head of some unfortunate victim. But due to the sneaky victim’s point-of-view shot, we’ve all had to wait half a year to find out who is at the receiving end.

Have you been grumbling since season 6 finished? Well Tom Payne basically says to stop it. Speaking to The Express, he said “People love to b***h and moan and people always want to have their own way… The large majority of people enjoy the story and they understand that’s … how we’re telling the story but I think a lot of people think they’re owed something.”

I think Mr ‘Jesus’ Payne might be on to something there. Since when do fans get to criticise every decision that the showrunners make? Well, since the internet I guess. But it seems a little ridiculous. And why all this hate for this cliff-hanger? TV’s been doing this for years and years. Don’t we all love a good cliff-hanger really? The speculation, the suspense, the wait, the not-knowing. It’s all part of the fun right?

Well Mr Payne didn’t stop there, adding “The show runners and every single actor and every single member of the crew work incredibly hard on the television show and it’s all for the fans and it’s all to make it the best experience for them. So, it’s a bit disheartening when fans get really angry at the showrunner because they’re really not trying to do them down in any way, they’re just trying to make the show the best it can be.”

So that’s that then. Stop your moaning, get on with your lives and just wait until you see what’s coming. Because Mr Payne isn’t averse to a little bit of hype-stirring himself, saying that not only will this be the “best season yet”, but also that after the first episode when the victim is revealed, fans are going to “wish they hadn’t wished for it because it’s going to be very brutal and a huge downer”.

Personally, I wouldn’t expect anything less.