Jon Bernthal had better start prepping his resume now…

… Because I doubt that he’ll be around for the (just announced) third season of “The Walking Dead.”  This isn’t a knock against the actor, as he has had one of the most difficult roles of the series in Shane.  Though he’s the best friend of main character Rick, we also know that he was Lori’s lover in the months that her husband was in a coma.  It may be hard to like a guy who was sleeping with the wife of the series’ protagonist, but the writers and Bernthal himself have made Shane into a more sympathetic character than he was in the comic by selling us on the idea that he really loves Lori.  If Rick had never woken up from his coma, then there would’ve been no doubt that Shane would’ve been a suitable replacement.  To be honest, it may have been even more interesting if Shane had been positioned as the main character and then had his integrity called into question by Rick’s sudden reappearance.

That’s not what happened, and it’s certainly not the direction that the series will be headed in.  If anything, Sunday’s episode showed that they’ll be taking the long way around to getting Shane to where he was at the end of the first volume of the comic.  Series creator Robert Kirkman has said that the TV series is in its way a “directors cut” of what he wanted to do with the comic.  The main reason that Shane met the end that he did there was because Kirkman was unsure as to how long he’d have to tell the story he did.  Now that he has a much larger and broader canvas to work on, it seems that while Kirkman has the same destination for the character in mind, the journey is going to be much different.

As depicted in the first volume of the comic, Shane’s fate comes off as both inevitable and highly predictable.  He’s a cipher fulfilling a role there.  In the TV series, the character has an air of tragedy to him as his love of Lori has caused him to act out in ways both regrettable (in the season one finale) and understandable.  In retrospect, his decision to leave in the season premiere seems to have been his last chance at having a happy ending.  If he had left when he did, then it’s possible that he could’ve been seen as a hero.  Instead, he now has the knowledge that anything he does on an outing can now be blamed on the “walkers.”  This may seem like a form of invincibility for him, but those of us who have read the first volume of the comic will likely suffer from irony poisoning — of the dramatic variety — after seeing the efforts Shane goes to in order to save Carl.  

That said, a lot of this was prompted by the events of the last five minutes of Sunday’s episode as I felt that the majority of it (and the one before it) had the story and characters spinning their wheels in place.  I was concerned that the budget cuts for this season were taking their toll, but after that ending, and the realization that trying to cram the events of the last two episodes into one wouldn’t have worked I’m more optimistic for the future.  So long as they’re able to find out what happened to Sophia next week.

If if things do go the way that I’m expecting, then I’ll be sad to see Bernthal go.  The man has done a great job bringing Shane to life and making him into a sympathetic, and now tragic, character.  Whatever TV series or movie he winds up in next will be lucky to have him.