AMC Spoil The Walking Dead Mid-Season Finale

Brains… Brains… AMC… Where are your brains…

Please note: There will NOT be any spoilers in this article. You’re safe with me.

The Walking Dead is fantastic. You must know about it by now. It’s been added to that short list of television programmes that everyone recommends to you.‘Have you seen The Walking Dead/Breaking Bad /House of Cards? Oh you must, it’s amazing. It’s the new Wire/Sopranos/Lost.’

However, the people recommending The Walking Dead to you probably didn't have a great time with the mid-season finale as AMC took to social media to spoil the ending seconds after it finished. Now this wouldn't seem so bad, but it seems that AMC seemed to forget about the time difference, which meant that the episode was spoilt for everyone bar those on the East Coast of the US.

First uploaded onto their Facebook page, the post included a picture of the recently deceased as well as the text: ‘RIP *Character’s Name*’. Unfortunately, there’s nothing left to the imagination in the post. If you've seen it, the episode has been spoiled for you. The picture is large and the text is the nail in the coffin.

Those on Twitter were safe, albeit for the best part of twenty minutes. Then The Walking Dead Twitter retweeted an image from their chat show series, The Talking Dead. Which, yep, you guessed it. Included the same image and same spoiler text. At this point you’d probably have a better chance escaping from a walker horde than from AMC’s spoiler barrage.

Two hours before the episode was to air on the West Coast of the US, the post in question was finally in the process of being taken down. It was still searchable for though and there was no escape from the floods of tears from your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

AMC have just apologized a few hours ago for the spoiler faux-pas, they took to their Facebook page to say: ‘We heard your feedback to last night's post, and we're sorry. With zero negative intent, we jumped the gun and put up a spoiler. Please know we're going to work to ensure that, in the future, possible spoilers by official AMC social feeds are killed before they can infect, certainly before the West Coast (U.S.) broadcast of The Walking Dead. As always, thank you for watching, and keep the comments coming. We appreciate all of your support. #RIPSpoiler.’

A nice playful apology that was mostly met with fans commenting that mistakes happen and that they shouldn't worry. As well of course as a few people wishing judgement as severe as the biblical plagues on AMC.

Even with the programme being spoiled, it was still watched by a massive 14.8 million people. That doesn't even include the vast number who watched it through piracy or streaming. The Walking Dead also took over social media with a 238% increase in mentions on social media. Though I can’t help but wonder how many of them were angry about the spoiler.

The Walking Dead has never shied away from killing off some our most beloved characters. I haven’t actually picked it back up again since midway through last season. Some wounds take a while to heal. I think I would have rather have had that traumatic experience spoiled for me.

Tom Welby

Tom has just graduated from University of East London in Creative and Professional Writing. He loves writing and is currently interning as content writer hoping to go further. His other loves include Arnold Schwarzenegger films and his dog. Follow him @TomAtSMF

Contact us on Twitter, on Facebook, or leave your comments below. To find out about social media training or management why not take a look at our website for more info http://socialmediacambridge.co.uk/