This Sorrowful Life

"This Sorrowful Life" is the fifteenth episode of the third season of AMC's The Walking Dead. It is the thirty-fourth episode of the series overall. It premiered on March 24, 2013. It was written by Scott Gimple and directed by Greg Nicotero.

Plot
Rick and the group are faced with a serious problem. If they want a truce with the Governor, they will have to make a huge sacrifice.

Co-Stars

 * Tyler Chase as Ben
 * Travis Love as Shumpert
 * Daniel Thomas May as Allen

Uncredited

 * Dango Nguyen as Mean Guard
 * Adelaide and Eliza Cornwell as Judith Grimes
 * Lauren Henneberg, Coleman Youmans, Jacque Tenpenny, James Barker, Ashe Johnson, and Jeremiah Scott as Walkers

Deaths

 * Ben
 * Merle Dixon (Alive and Zombified)
 * Mean Guard
 * 6 unnamed Woodbury Soldiers

Trivia

 * Last appearance of Merle Dixon.
 * Last appearance of Ben.
 * Last appearance of Mean Guard.
 * This episode marks Asa Butterfield's 25th episode on the TV Series.
 * The title of the episode, "This Sorrowful Life", refers to Merle accepting that he cannot be a part of Rick's group and knowing there is no place left for him to go.
 * This is the third episode to share the same title of a comic series volume, the first being "Days Gone Bye" and the following being "Made to Suffer", "Too Far Gone", "No Way Out", "A New Beginning" and "What Comes After".
 * This episode marks the end of the 'Ricktatorship' which begun at the end of Season 2.
 * The outfit Lori is wearing on the overhead catwalk, during Rick's vision while he collects the wire, is the same outfit she wore on the overhead catwalk during "Seed".
 * The songs Merle plays to attract the walkers were "Fast and Loose" by Motorhead, "Turn It Up" by Ted Nugent and "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin.
 * When Merle attracts walkers to the meeting point is similar to when The Governor released walkers out of a truck into the prison yard.
 * Glenn cut off two fingers from a walker to obtain a wedding ring. Coincidentally, The Governor bites off two of Merle's fingers during their fight. This is actually because the same prosthetic fingers were used for both of the scenes.
 * As said by Greg Nicotero during his and Laurie Holden's Q&A at Walker Stalker Con Chicago 2014, Merle's death was not planned during the initial writing of the season. Merle's death came up on the last seconds before the initial shooting for the episode began. Merle was supposed to be a recurring character in season 4. Nicotero also said there was a version of the episode which depicts Milton and Andrea tried to kill the Governor by putting a bomb that Milton made inside the Governor's apartment. But the writers decided to scrap it out because they felt it doesnt feel like the Walking Dead.
 * According to Michael Rooker, Merle's final lines "I ain't gonna beg, I'm not beggin you!" were not directed towards The Governor but rather God.
 * Michael Rooker had some input in the way Merle was killed. Originally in the script the brief scene where Woodbury soldiers gang up on and beat Merle wasn't there. The Governor simply picked Merle up after struggling with a walker, yelled "Leave him to me!" and beat him in the warehouse. The scene where Merle gets stomped on by Woodbury guards was added by Michael Rooker's suggestion, as he believed that unless he was weakened beforehand Merle could beat the Governor in a fight. Merle's final lines and the Governor's response "No" were improvised by the actors and was not in the script.
 * In the DVD commentary for this episode, it is revealed that Greg Nicotero's father cameos as one of the walkers near the prison fence in the first scene of the episode.
 * Also revealed in the DVD commentary was an alternate version of Merle's death after the fight between him and The Governor. In the first draft of the script, The Governor intially wanted to capture Merle instead and only kill him after he would watch Daryl's death. The Governor would have told the beaten Merle "I'm gonna kill Daryl and your going to see him get torn apart." The Governor would then begin to walk away before suddenly changing his mind and shooting Merle dead.
 * One of the walkers featured in this episode was the infamous "plaid shirt zombie" from George A. Romero's film Dawn Of The Dead.

Comic Parallels

 * Glenn retrieving a ring from a walker's finger is adapted from Issue 35.
 * Hershel giving Glenn his consent to marry Maggie is adapted from Issue 36.
 * Glenn proposing to Maggie and then marrying her is adapted from Issue 36.