Personally, I understand why they do the cliffhanger. I don't really like it.... but here we all are talking about it. It's all over the radio and internet. EVERYONE is talking about it! That is why they do it. Sucks we have to wait 6 months!
Everyone is talking about it, about how terrible it was.
Imagine how much BIGGER it would be if they did it right.
Imagine this instead (graphic description):
Negan beating Glenn to death on camera. Caving his head in, Glenn's eye popping out, going into convulsions, screaming "Maggie!"
Negan beating his head until its nothing but his body with mutilation where his head should be.
Everyone screaming and crying. Maggie screaming in terror. Rick sobbing. Negan laughing.
Rick getting angry, says, "I will kill you. not today, but I will kill you."
Negan responds, "You still wanna act tough, I'll have a few of my men run a train on your boy. I'm sure a few would be into that sort of thing."
Rick looks down, defeating, crying, says, "No, you're right, I'm sorry"
Negan grabs Ricks chin and says, "YOU did this. Your birth didn't have to be so hard. YOU made it that way. I hope we learned our little lesson. I'll be back next week for first payment. Ta-ta."
The final scene being Negan walking away, his back turned to the camera. Lucille slung over his shoulder with Glenn's brains dripping off.
^^^People would be talking about that WAY more. That would have been historic. There would have been news articles about "Did the walking dead go too far or break violence boundaries?" There would have been reports of people having panic attacks in front of their TVs. It could have been glorious. Negan shows up and within 5 minutes he has brutally murdered a favorite character. THAT is an introduction.
I understand what they were trying to do. But I think it failed.
I get the whole thing about it being the end of an era for the group, and who dies is part of the next segment. I just feel like everyone knew that scene was coming. Everyone knew someone was going to die. Then we wait 1.5 hours and it's still not known. Ugh.
I personally liked the road-block build up. It made the saviors seem overwhelming and menacing. The increasing numbers at each, the man they hang as an example. I thought the episode was really good up until the final scene.
A cliffhanger needs to be at the right place. This wasn't it. Even if it had done nothing more than show the person who died, everyone would still be talking about it, except it would be "That was crazy! What are they going to do next?" There is ALWAYS speculation and cliffhanging in a show like this, because we don't know where it's going next no matter what just happened.
The impact of that character death is ruined. The momentum is gone.