How Did Christian Serratos' Rosita Die On The Walking Dead?

Few shows have had such fascinating, unlikely journeys as "The Walking Dead." Based on Robert Kirkman's best-selling Image Comics series of the same name, it was a cornerstone of AMC's programming for more than a decade, spawning an entire universe of spin-offs. It was also, for a time, the biggest show on cable before it experienced a pretty serious decline. It was quite the journey.

Over the course of the show's 11 seasons, quite a few characters came and went. Most of the time, they went because they died. Not everyone was as lucky as Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes, who left "The Walking Dead" during season 9 alive, only to return later in the spin-off series "The Ones Who Live." For the most part, any actor who left the show left because their character died. Such was the case with Rosita, played by Christian Serratos. Kind of.

Rosita came into the zombie-infested world created by Kirkman in season 4 and was there until the bitter end. Well, almost until the bitter end. Rosita died on the show, serving as one of the last gut punches that viewers had to endure before reaching the end of this 177-episode journey. But how did Rosita die? More importantly, why did she die? We're going to go over all of this and more in detail. Let's get into it.

"The Walking Dead" series finale aired in 2022 and brought back some familiar faces. It had a lot of storylines to tie up and, as anyone who watched the show for any amount of time probably would expect, not everyone made it out alive. Rosita was the show's biggest sacrifice, having been a part of 129 episodes after making her debut in the season 4 episode "Inmates." From then on, she was a mainstay.

Aptly titled "Rest in Peace," the finale follows several storylines, including Daryl and Carol rushing Judith to the hospital. We've also got Maggie and Negan taking up arms against Pamela, which helped to tee up "Dead City." Most crucially, Rosita, Eugene, and Gabriel are hunting for her lost baby, Coco. Luke (Dan Fogler) and Jules (Alex Sgambati) die pretty early on in the episode, but the producers saved the bigger kill for later on.

Rosita did manage to rescue Coco in the episode. That's the good news. However, attempting to escape a group of walkers, Rosita falls off a pipe and right into the arms of the flesh-eaters below. She emerges from the horde, but not before getting bitten on the neck. She doesn't keep it from the group and reveals the bite to everyone as they celebrate their victory in saving the Commonwealth. Before fading out, Rosita took the high road, saying the following to Gabriel:

"Everything's perfect. I just want to remember this moment."

"The series wrapped up right after that, and it was horrible. Horrible! F***, it was so horrible," Serratos said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly just after the finale aired. "We were crying so hard. We were shaking. I've had some people joke like, "Oh my God, you have these death dinners, and you sob, and it's not an actual death." And no, of course not. But when you experience the dark things that we experience on that show together, and you do it right, it doesn't feel fake. It feels real."

Rosita's death proved to be one of the more memorable ones in the show, in part because it helped bring the whole thing in for a landing. Glenn's death on "The Walking Dead" will always be remembered the most, for better or worse, just because it was so brutal in addition to being unexpected. But Rosita's came with a lot of emotional resonance. The whole idea came from Serratos herself, as surprising as that may sound.

"I've been on the show for so long, and in watching the show, one of the things that I really loved about it was that it made me emotional. It tugged at your heartstrings," Serratos said in that same interview with Entertainment Weekly. Speaking further, she explained why she felt someone had to die, even if that had to be her character.

"It tugging at your heartstrings was something that I really fell in love with about the show. And I just really wanted people to have that emotional experience in our finale, especially. I think a show that was about possibly losing your loved ones, you want to lose somebody at the end. I know it sounds so dark, but I feel like the show, we owed it to the fans to break their hearts one last time, if that makes sense."

To Serratos' point, "The Walking Dead" was full of upsetting deaths during its run. Some of those worked well for viewers, despite the pain, while others maybe didn't. But it would have felt perhaps a bit cowardly to let all of the major characters live in the final episode. Serratos did the bold thing and suggested that she bite the bullet.

"I was so lucky to outlive my character in the comic book and get to stay on the show for so long," Serratos added in that same interview. Indeed, Rosita's lifespan on the show was much, much longer than that of her counterpart in the comics. Rosita's death was also far more peaceful on the show when compared to what happened in the source material.

In the comics, Rosita is killed off-page at the hands of the Whisperers, who were part of "The Walking Dead" season 9 and some of the show's best episodes. Rosita lived through that arc in the show, but not in the comics. The Whisperers are a group of survivors who wear human skin suits as a means to blend in with the walkers. They're an odd bunch, to be certain. Their ideological differences eventually led them to war with the Alexandrians.

As part of this, the Whisperers capture and kill several members of the communities, placing victims' severed heads on spikes as part of a border to mark their territory. At the end of "The Walking Dead" #144, Rick finds this border, with Rosita's head atop one of those spikes. What's more, she was pregnant at the time she was killed. Truly brutal stuff.

Fortunately, viewers didn't have to endure that awfulness in the show. It was just one of several instances of the show diverting from the source material, like when Abraham's "Walking Dead" comic death was given to Denise in the show. It's just the nature of the game when adapting something from one medium to another. Changes will be made along the way. In Rosita's case, what happened to her on TV was far more favorable, even if she still wound up dead in the end.

You can grab "The Walking Dead Complete Series" on Blu-ray from Amazon.