Why This Walking Dead Villain Needed To Die Way Earlier

Get your guns! We go in! Kill them all

This is The Governor, one of the many ruthless villains in AMC's The Walking Dead

But this Governor was, in many respects, a very different character than his original comic book

counterpart. And while tinkering with the iconic bad guy was definitely a risky and controversial

move, it paid off. And fans really seemed to enjoy the new version of the character. At least

they did it first. Because after a while, he just wore out his welcome

Failing to see the devil beside you. Oh, I see him all right

In October of 2003, writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore, soon replaced by Charlie

Adlard, released the first issue of the original comic book series, The Walking Dead

Taking place in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, the story follows hero Rick Grimes

as he attempts to lead a band of survivors through a landscape infested with what they

refer to as walkers. Along the way, Rick and his group encounter all manner of threats, with the most dangerous being other human survivors

One of those other people is Philip Blake, also known as the Governor

Debuting in the 27th issue of the series, Blake is the violently sadistic and thoroughly psychopathic leader of a Georgia town called Woodbury

which Rick, Glenn, and Michonne inadvertently discover after seeing a helicopter crash

It doesn't take long for the heroes to discover the Governor is a complete monster

He gleefully brags about feeding strangers to walkers, cuts off Rick's hand during the

interrogation, and tortures Glenn and sexually assaults Michonne. He also keeps his niece Penny, a walker, locked up in a closet so he can apparently make out

with her. Blake's motivations are clear and simple. He's crazy and power hungry

His motivation has no rhyme or reason to understand. And while he eventually loses his grip on the people of Woodbury he has no real story arc of his own either But he still a pivotal figure in the mythos because he serves as Rick first real challenge at the leadership level and that challenge is absolutely unforgivingly brutal

In the comics, Rick's stories are often about testing the boundaries of what he was willing

to do to protect his people. In this sense, the governor serves as the darkest possible reflection of the hero's future

if he crosses too many of those boundaries. He wants the prison. He wants the scone

He wants us dead. We're going to war. Ultimately, tensions between the governor's camp in Woodbury and Rick's camp

which has taken up residence in an abandoned prison, boil over. The governor storms the prison in a tank, and during the attack

he causes the deaths of Rick's wife Lori and their newborn baby, before meeting his own demise

The deaths of his family and the effect the entire storyline had on Rick

marked a pivotal moment in the comic and its protagonist's evolution. The storyline was wildly popular with comic readers

and while it was obviously way too disturbing for primetime as it appeared on the page

when The Walking Dead became a TV show in 2010, fans still expected to see the governor's story brought to life in some form or another

I'm here for one thing only, your surrender. Oh, you want to surrender? Come get it

The first sign that the TV show had something different from the comic in mind came when it was announced that actor David Morrissey would be playing the part

Handsome and respectable looking, Morrissey wasn't really what most people imagined when they read the comic

which depicted the governor as a ragged, tough guy who sometimes, arguably, resembled actor Denny Trejo

I swear by this guy who calls himself the governor. Pretty boy, charming, Jim Jones type

But his physical appearance wouldn't be the only change, because when the character finally made his debut in the season 3 episode, Walk With Me

he was not quite what anyone was expecting. The TV governor turns out to be level-headed

Well at least he seems that way at first You not prisoners here you guess But if you want to leave as I said you free to do so But we don open the gates past dusk But while the protagonists don find out for a little while

the audience quickly learns that beneath the surface, this governor is not what he appears to be

We see him do things like ambush and joyfully slaughter a military unit

to steal their equipment and sit in his room, drinking scotch and staring at a wall of severed heads

So yeah, he's a little crazy, but unlike his comic book counterpart, he's actually got a reason for being the way he is

In this version, it turns out that the governor is Penny's father, and he blames himself for failing to protect his daughter

from being turned into a walker. He keeps her locked up in his closet, like in the comics

but he does it because he has a scientist friend working on a cure, and he still hopes to redeem himself by turning her back into a human

We all have our secrets, huh? Like Penny. You know about Penny

But eventually, Michonne kills Penny, and after a brutal fight between Michonne and the governor

the governor declares war on Rick and his people. All signs pointed to a showdown in the season finale

You can almost hear the tank engine warming up to carry the governor to his inevitable confrontation

with Rick and all the other heroes, but that's not what happened. Instead, the episode ended with the governor

killing almost all of his own men after they backed away from a failed assault on the prison

and in the end, he just drives off, very much alive. It left the season without a final battle with the big bad

And while in the abstract, that's fine, what they gave the audience instead was anticlimactic

And that turned out to be a bit of a mistake because after the letdown, some fans never really regained their enthusiasm

I could have killed you all, I didn't. And here we are. The following season found a traumatized governor

separating from the last of his Woodbury allies and burning the town to the ground

After wandering around in a suicidal haze, he eventually finds himself a new family

complete with a new daughter who is not unlike Penny. The experience resets him to something vaguely resembling

the decent man he once was But when his new family finds themselves stuck in a community run by people he perceives to be incompetent Blake new lease on life turns out to be short He takes charge of the situation and becomes the governor all over again It was a weirdly forced second origin

story that just served to make him feel less like a real person and more like a comic book villain

If you understand what it's like to have a daughter, then how can you threaten to kill someone else's? Because they aren't mine. It all leads to his

final moments in the season four episode Too Far Gone, when the governor, ostensibly in search of a

safe place to take his family, finally storms the prison in a tank, like he did in the comics. But

in the TV show, it's too little too late. Instead of being the explosive climax of a terrifying and

suspenseful transformative experience for the show's heroes, it's a weirdly disconnected, isolated event that unceremoniously happens in the middle of a season

Long in your way, harder for you to get out of here

It's understandable why the creatives in charge of the show are always trying to bob and weave

in order to buck audience expectations, but in their handling of the governor, they took it too

far. They had a perfect villain set up in the books, and because they were worried about

maintaining the element of surprise, they completely butchered the adaptation. The more

deliberate, character-driven version of the governor from TV was never going to provide the

exact same kind of threat that the comic book version did. The TV version had a different appeal

and could have simply taken a different path to a similarly satisfying conclusion

had the writers not let all the air out of it by stretching the story for an extra half season

Rick Grimes' experiences with the governor were a major turning point in the comics

and could have been on TV as well. But succumbing to the temptation to keep him around

kept the TV version from finishing with anything close to the same impact

The governor's storyline, which should have ended in the season 3 finale

was allowed to wander through season four, a decaying relic of what it once was, like a walker

And if there's one thing The Walking Dead teaches us, it's that walkers need to be put down