Spoilers ahead for the April 8 episode of The Walking Dead and the comics! As the end credits rolled for this week's episode of The Walking Dead, one particularly interesting character's fate was up in the air. Things aren't looking great for him in the series, but Dwight is still alive in The Walking Dead comics, meaning that Austin Amelio's character's time might not be up just yet.
Dwight has been a bit of a loose cannon during his time on the show, never perfectly fitting into any group. He used to be allied with Negan and his people, but now he's teamed up with Rick and the rest of Alexandria. If Dwight does die on the show, it'd be a departure from the comics, and also close off a lot of possibilities for any closure on what happened to his wife Sherry, who went missing last season after leaving her wedding ring behind. Mentions of Sherry have been peppered into recent episodes, causing some to speculate that viewers might see her again sometime soon. Of course, Sherry could show up after Dwight dies, pouring salt into the wound, but the popular theory seems to be that she's actually dead (as Reddit user I-Did-It-4-Da-Rock supposes) and Dwight has to do more to cope with that before he makes an exit — if he does at all.
In the comics, Dwight soldiers on, still apparently teamed up with Rick and Alexandria, and Sherry, who serves more of an antagonist role in the source material than she does in the show, has just recently died at the hands of Rick. This causes a rift between Rick and Dwight, who doesn't altogether believe him when he says he only killed Sherry out of self-defense — she tries to strangle him and as he kicks her away, she slams into a table and breaks her neck. The absence of this storyline could totally change the dynamic between Dwight and Rick on The Walking Dead show, and Dwight's death could ensure that the story moves on without him altogether.
Whether viewers will see Sherry again is pretty up in the air, as some have pointed out that Christine Evangelista, who portrayed the character, is currently starring in another show — The Arrangement — and might not necessarily come back just to provide Dwight with some closure. But never say never. Evangelista seemed to think, at least in a 2017 interview with Business Insider, that Sherry was still alive in the show's universe. "She's running right now. She's doing her thing," she said. "I have a lot of faith in her." If Dwight does end up dying, though, that could seal the deal for the end of Sherry, since much of her conflict in the comics is intertwined with his story.
If the show strays from this entire comic book arc, though, it wouldn't be unprecedented. The Walking Dead has been known, especially in recent seasons, for diverging from the path its predecessor laid down for it. Especially following Carl's controversial death earlier this season — which didn't happen in the comic books — fans are on their toes, anxiously awaiting what curve balls might be thrown at them next. Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick, told Entertainment Weekly that following Carl's death, the show was entering "uncharted waters." He added, "Loosening and untethering us from a lot of the story in the comic is one really interesting way of moving the story forward, and perhaps we can look at a bigger story outside of the one that we’ve been focusing on for eight years."
Readers of the comics might think they know what's in store for Dwight, but The Walking Dead has proven over and over again that even the show's biggest fans can be surprised.
