Since the very beginning of the end of the world, Glenn Rhee has managed to survive unthinkable travesties on The Walking Dead. The pilot episode of the groundbreaking series, which premiered on Halloween in 2010.
The season begins with a former sheriff deputy named Rick Grimes, who awakes from a coma in a post-apocalyptic world. Searching for his family, Rick ends up in a tricky situation and the next character the initial five million viewers were introduced to is Glenn.
Glenn’s Season 1 Survival
Still wearing his pizza delivery get-up and baseball hat, Glenn Rhee goes above and beyond to save Rick, after the lead character winds up in an abandoned army tank, surrounded by walkers. On the walkie, Glenn asks, “Hey you, dumbass. Yeah, you in the tank. Cozy in there?” Already presenting himself as a leader, Glenn organizes a method to save Rick, which leads the group into even more of a mess.
Glenn’s first near-death experience (on screen) occurs when his group is surrounded by a crowd of walkers, due to the sound of gunshots. Rick has the idea to drape themselves in blood-drenched clothing with walker remains, which gives the group a fair chance of escape. Armed with an ax and crowbar, Rick and Glenn make their way to freedom.
Glenn’s Season 2 Survival
In Season 2, Glenn Rhee and his group make their way to a family farm, where he meets Maggie for the first time. Within their initial love story, Glenn is asked to help with a problem with the drinking water. At the bottom of a well, a bloated walker has fallen and the farm is worried about not having enough drinking water. Glenn is lowered into the well to try and eradicate the problem, which nearly gets him killed.
Glenn and Maggie | Photo Credit AMC
Glenn’s Season 3 Survival
In one of the more heartbreaking episodes, Season 3’s pulse comes from an episode where Glenn and Maggie are taken as hostages. Glenn isn’t sure if Maggie is even alive or not when Merle ties him to a chair and releases a walker to kill him. Somewhat of an even closer death that well, Glenn manages to escape.
Glenn’s Season 4 Survival(s)
Season 4’s near death is somewhat less exciting to watch but equally painful for true fans. During that time at the prison, Glenn becomes terribly sick. Maggie actually finds him gurgling blood and nearly unconscious. Later in the episode, Glenn’s would-be father-in-law, Hershel, begins a procedure to nurse him back to health.
After chaos erupts at the prison, Maggie and Glenn become separated once again. In one of the first times that the series attempts to fool audiences of Glenn’s death, Maggie believes she finds a zombified-Glenn on a school bus of walkers. After she discovers that this isn’t Glenn, audiences are somewhat relieved to find him alive, but not necessarily well, back at the prison, after an explosion opens the gates.
The relentless Season 4 comes after Glenn Rhee once more as he tries to make his way back to Maggie. With Tara, Glenn has found his way into a dark tunnel, when he stumbles upon a heard of walkers, with only rubble separating them from death. As the walkers approach, Glenn and Tara are next on the menu when Maggie, Bob, and Sasha show up to the rescue and clear a path to freedom.
Glenn’s Season 5 Survival(s)
Tied up, gagged, and facing death, Rick, Darryl, Glenn, and Bob are finding out that men are much worse than walkers. As the men lean over a metal troth, the residents of Terminus have turned the former safe haven into a cannibal butcher shop. It would appear that Glenn is next in line to be murdered when Carol shows her true colors and takes aim on the group’s captors.
Later in the season, Glenn and Noah are left to die due to Nicholas’ cowardice. In a frightening revolving door fork in the road, Noah sacrifices himself so Glenn can escape, leaving viewers with somewhat of an avenge-me feeling.
Glenn Squares Off | Photo Credit AMC
Glenn’s Season 6 Survival
Angered, to say the least, Glenn finds Nicholas outside of Alexandria’s safety borders where he attacks him for leaving them to die. In this first bout with Nicholas, Glenn is shot but manages to survive. Later in the season, and much more deceptive that the school bus scene in Season 4, Nicholas and Glenn Rhee stand atop a dumpster, surrounded by walkers. The duo falls into the crowd and it would appear that Glenn is torn apart (even so much that the actor’s name is removed in the next episode). Luckily for Glenn, this is another chance for survival, as he slides away to freedom.
Glenn’s Season 7 Demise
With a long wait, viewers were unsure of Glenn’s fate, based on the original storyline within the comics. While most of the attention is between Negan and Rick, it was hard not to think of Glenn and Maggie. After his countless survivals, Glenn died nearly the same as he did in the comics, by the hand of Negan’s Lucille, with one of the most gruesome deaths on cable television.
