The Walking Dead Villain Fans Wish They Could See More Of
When it comes to creating characters for TV, usually it's better to leave the audience wanting more. Nothing is guaranteed to drive away the audience quite like giving too much screen time to a character that the majority of viewers find annoying. Of course, showrunners can always go too far in the opposite direction and not spend enough time on a character with potential, which leaves fans feeling like an opportunity was missed. It's a fine line to walk, and it's impossible to satisfy everyone.
The Walking Dead has provided some of TV's greatest villains in its ten-plus seasons — AMC is currently airing season 10's "bonus episodes," which were created to make up for 2020's COVID-19-related delays. In the earlier seasons, Rick and the gang dealt with everyone from the murderous governor to their treacherous former friend Shane. Escaping to Alexandria didn't make things easier for the Atlanta survivors, as they've recently faced threats from Negan, the Wolves, and most recently, the ultra-creepy Whisperers. And that doesn't even include the millions of shambling walkers/roamers/biters, or whatever else they're called besides "zombies."
Usually, The Walking Dead gives its villains enough development without overstaying their welcome. Yet, when the show recently introduced a new villain character for just one episode before killing him off, many fans felt he could have stuck around a lot longer.
Farewell, Mays. We hardly knew ye.
Mays is introduced toward the end of season 10's 19th episode, "One More." Alexandria survivors Gabriel and Aaron stumble on him while scavenging a storage locker and inadvertently eat his food before realizing it belongs to him. Mays has been isolated for a long period, and the experience appears to have broken him. He's come to believe that humans are inherently evil. Gabriel and Aaron disagree, and Mays forces them to debate the point over a game of Russian Roulette.
Eventually, Gabriel and Aaron learn the true reason why Mays is so lost. Earlier, Mays was hiding out along with his twin brother and his brother's wife and daughter. When Mays and his brother fought over food, Mays forced his brother into another game of Russian Roulette, and his brother's wife and daughter were killed.
After his confession, Gabriel and Aaron encourage Mays to accept that not all humans are evil. Just when Mays starts to come around, and looks like he might even come back to Alexandria, Gabriel kills him with Aaron's metal arm.
On Reddit, some fans wished that Mays could have been more than a one-off character. Some thought that Mays could have followed in the footsteps of earlier characters like Shane and Merle, who were always more "loose cannon" members of the Atlanta survivor group and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. Fans also praised Robert Patrick's performance as Mays. And given Patrick's legendary roles in other sci-fi and horror titles like Terminator 2 and The X-Files, he definitely would have been right at home on The Walking Dead.
However, in the end, Gabriel and Aaron have just met too many psychopaths to trust another one, even one who seems like he might be redeemable.