Why Glenn Had to Die on The Walking Dead

It's time to face facts, The Walking Dead fans. One of your favorite characters has died. For real this time. Obvious spoiler alert.

Glenn (Steven Yeun) is gone. He had to die, according to executive producer Robert Kirkman. In Kirkman's The Walking Deadcomic book Glenn also dies at the hands of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), but the show added a second victim to the harrowing scene: Abraham (Michael Cudlitz). Why didn't the show change things up and spare Glenn? It hasn't been shy about mixing things up before—just look at what happened to Andrea (Laurie Holden) in the show (she's dead on TV, alive in the comics) and Carol (Melissa McBride) in the comics (she was kind of crazy in the comics and dead, on TV she's a total badas

"It's just that there's a lot of material that comes from Glenn's death in the comics,"Kirkman told EW. "And while we do try to change things up to keep things interesting for the audience, and for me, this is one that there's so much that comes from Rick, there's so much with Negan, because that character is someone that he killed, and definitely Maggie is someone that kind of gets put on the trajectory that affects a great number of stories and a great number of characters moving forward. So it was kind of essential that that part of the scene at least remained intact, unfortunately."

Yeun made his first TV appearance since his character's big death when he stopped byConan.

"Yeah, I feel dead in real life," Yeun told

Conan O'Brien about the grief that's been sweeping Walking Dead fans. "Which is good or bad..."

When asked about how emotional it got filming his brutal death scene, Yeun said, "It was pretty bad, watching all your friends cry and go through it, but I got to bug my eye out…so that was cool."

Kirkman told EW they had looked at other options for the big death, but in the end it had to be Glenn.

"We did discuss options," he said. "At the end of the day, we were like, pulling the thread on this sweater just pulls too many things apart and it's too difficult to get back on that trajectory without that death."

The Walking Dead, which has already been renewed for season eight, airs Sundays, 9 p.m. on AMC.