TWD's Josh McDermitt Would Have Killed Eugene Off In A Comical Way
When it comes to "The Walking Dead," no character is ever truly safe from a brutal and unexpected end. Josh McDermitt, who played Eugene on the series from Season 4 up until its series finale in Season 11, is aware of this fact just as much as anyone. In fact, the actor actually had his own idea for how the character of Eugene should die — if that moment ever actually arrived. While he stated that a heroic death would of course be desirable, he also wasn't opposed to something erring on the comical side of things.
"I would love it ... it would have to be one of two things," McDermitt said during a Reddit AMA in 2015. "If Eugene's going to go out strong, I would want him to go out a hero, saving the life of SO many people ... but if he couldn't go out that way, I'd love if it he just choked on a burrito, and the whole episode was devoted to them trying to Heimlich maneuver on Eugene, and in the end, he just ... dies."
Even if this would have gone against the show's usual status quo of having characters die in horrendously dramatic ways that add fuel to the fire of the grim reality that these fictional people now live in, there's no denying that it would have been a hilarious, almost black comedy-like death for Eugene. Still, considering how he developed over the years, it might not have made sense for a later season Eugene.
Eugene became less of a coward and source of comedy as the series aged
Josh McDermitt's proposed comedic death might have worked out well for an earlier incarnation of Eugene in "The Walking Dead," but it's almost difficult to imagine such a fate befalling a later-season version of him. The actor himself noted how the two versions of the character would scarcely even recognize each other if they somehow managed to meet.
"He'd be unrecognizable, 100%," McDermitt told ComicBook in 2022. "I wouldn't even call him timid. He [used to run] in the opposite direction when he saw a walker." The actor then pointed to an instance in the final season where he runs into danger to save Max (Margot Bingham) from a walker without hesitation. For him, this illustrated just how much his character developed over the years, as an earlier-season version of Eugene would have simply run away from the danger. So while McDermitt's previous proposed death-by-burrito scenario was more than likely just a fun joke, it's a true testament to his character development that the option no longer seems even remotely feasible by the time it reached its final season.