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twdmusicboxmystery · 5 years

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AMC/ABC Actor Patterns

Okay, I said I’d get this posted this week. Let me first say that this won’t be terribly ground-breaking. It’s actually just more evidence for something I and many others have pointed out before. But I’ve been thinking about it off and on since Michael Cudlitz’s show—The Kids are Alright—was cancelled.

Quick recap: Many of us thought that the show Emily did a few years ago—Conviction—was kind of suspicious. It was small, produced by ABC (a partner/sister-network of AMC), promoted by AMC and TWD, and only lasted one season. We had lots of reasons it was strange. It seemed like Emily just took a small potatoes roll she and the network knew wouldn’t last, which adds to our theories of her return to TWD.

I most recently talked about this HERE when I pointed out that, just this past season, Lauren Cohen followed a similar pattern. The major difference is that they didn’t try to make us think Maggie was dead. They wrote her out of the show from the second half of the season (Ep 6-16), but just said she’d left, going to another place. So everyone assumed she’d be back.

But in the mean time, Lauren did Whiskey Cavalier. Other than Maggie’s character not having a death fakeout, it followed the exact same template. Lauren did a show that was produced by ABC, promoted by AMC and TWD, and only lasted one season. I thought WC had a better chance of getting picked up for additional seasons than Conviction ever did…but it wasn’t. So it ended up being the same. I saw that as simply being more proof that Emily will return to TWD at some point. And granted, we haven’t technically seen Lauren return yet, but it’s been confirmed that we’ll see her again in S10.

When Michael Cudlitz’s show got cancelled, that was the first time it occurred to me that his show followed this same pattern. Let’s examine the evidence, shall we?

First, let me say that this isn’t a team delusional/he’s really alive theory where Abraham’s character is concerned. I don’t think he survived Negan at all. How could he have? His injury was far and away more deadly and final than Beth’s was. So while I think Beth is alive, Abraham, not so much.

1. During S4 of FTWD, we were introduced to Althea, who used to be an investigative journalist. She takes video of people she meets in the apocalypse. In her collection of tapes, one of them was labelled in a way that suggested it might possibly be of Abraham and Eugene. Michael Cudlitz even commented on this on Twitter.

2. There’s a humorous commercial I remember seeing that features Abraham and Eugene. It’s for one of the TWD games. I haven’t seen it on TV in a while, but it aired long after Abraham’s death. Kinda suspicious. I mean, if we’re suspicious that they still use Beth and Daryl to promote the show, thinking it means that relationship will return at some point, then we have to apply the same thing to Abraham and Eugene. Check it out on YouTube.

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I also think it’s important to point out that most of the deceased characters from TWD are not used this way to promote the show. We don’t see commercials including Bob, Tyrese, or Sasha that are used to promote the show. And similarly, there have been absolutely no whispers or rumors of their return to the show or the spinoff. So we can count on these kinds of promos as being hints of some sort.

3. It’s been said (X) that the new TWD spinoff, which we don’t have a title for yet, may feature the backstories of deceased TWD characters. Of course that could be any deceased character, but the fact is that this makes the idea of Abraham returning—showing his backstory BEFORE he met Glenn in S4—a real possibility.

4. On this last episode of FTWD, Daniel had a cigar very reminiscent of the ones we saw around Abraham, and said a friend told him to save it for when things got better. I thought of Abraham, and given this edit I reposted from @theinfectedtwd (IG) obviously I wasn’t the only one.

Even more “coincidental” (that’s sarcasm) is the fact that the FTWD crew is currently hanging out in Texas. Remember that Abraham and Eugene met and started out in Texas. Houston, if I remember correctly. So the idea of them having once run into Daniel and/or Althea really isn’t far fetched at all.

5. MC just finished up one season of The Kids are Alright, also produced by ABC, also promoted by AMC and TWD, and also only lasting one season. (I was thinking he’d done two seasons of this show. Maybe it’s just because ABC shows have longer seasons of 22-24 episodes, but I thought he’d done 2 seasons. Nope. Only one. Cancelled after that.)

So we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. But assuming we see a lot of Maggie in TWD S10, and assuming Abraham and Eugene’s backstory shows up in the spinoff, that will now be three mainstream, TWD characters who left the show for a time, did a small-potatoes ABC series that lasted one season, and then returned. Well, I guess two. Beth hasn’t returned yet. But my point is that this is simply more evidence that she will. This is becoming an undeniable pattern.

In fact, if you google this, there’s a LOT of people talking about Abraham’s possible return to the show. Some even claim it’s been concerned, though most of those are clickbait articles, so I wouldn’t take their word until and unless AMC officially confirms it. But at this point, his return is almost a foregone conclusion.

In closing, let me throw one more thing out there. This is 100% my own opinion, based on all my years of research into this stuff, and not something I can prove, but I thought I’d share anyway. In each of these cases, the networks (both ABC and AMC) and the actors and everyone else involved goes into these short-lived ABC series acting like they genuinely believe/hope the series will succeed and be on the air for many seasons.

And of course they do. That’s their job. It’s the actors’ job to promote their shows and the everyone else’s job to be optimistic and gush about how great this series is. Otherwise, no one would watch.

But again, in my humble opinion, I think that’s a little deceptive on their part. I think each of these actors has gone into these ABC series knowing full well that the series won’t last long. Because ABC and AMC are sister companies, they can collaborate and choose to put the actors in the series that are least likely to run for the long term.

That may sound weird, but most networks start a number of new series each season. They use a lot of different variables to determine which ones are more likely to succeed and sink most of their advertising dollars into those ones, more or less ignoring the others. So why do these series if they’re not going to succeed? Because they have to put something on the air and you never know when you might get a runaway hit (like TWD).

So they may ask ABC to cast their actors in the series most likely to only run one season. They may also put into their contracts that, for example, Lauren will be returning to TWD in S10, so if ABC wants to continue Whiskey Cavalier, they’ll have to replace her with another actress.

But I digress.

The details really aren’t terribly important, and I don’t pretend to know the detailed ins and outs of this industry. Truly, I don’t. But I have a basic understanding of how big business works and I’ve been following this franchise closely for more than 4 years now.

I just find it suspicious that, despite how many people loved WC and how critically acclaimed it was, it was still cancelled after one season, and now we’re hearing that Lauren will definitely be in S10 a lot more than she was in S9.

Similarly, we have a lot of hints that Abraham might show up in a new TWD spinoff. It’s in the works and they’re casting for it now. I’m assuming they’ll start filming before too much longer. And suddenly, his show is ending. Which means he’ll be available for filming. Just saying.

One other thing I thought of while writing this. I was going to say that while, yes, we saw several deceased characters in Rick’s hallucination in 9x05, those were small, 5-minute roles. Not the characters returning to some branch of the franchise for an extended amount of time. And that’s true. But it occurred to me that we DO think Beth will return, and we heard her voice, but didn’t see her face. Who else’s voice did we hear? Abraham’s. An interesting parallel, if both of them return to the show in some way. I don’t know if this will end up being a thing—we’ll have to wait and see—but the other voices we heard were Morgan’s (already in another branch of the franchise) and...Lori’s. Interesting.

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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