** SPOILER ALERT: Do not read on if you haven’t seen the Season 6 finale of ‘The Walking Dead’ **
After The Walking Dead Season 6 finale aired in April on AMC, fans were both livid and tantalized by the cliffhanger ending.
At the end of the episiode, “big bad” Negan is introduced for the first time, and he’s shown killing someone with his infamous weapon, Lucille, which is a baseball bat covered in barbed wire. The audience never found out who, since it was shot from the victim’s first-person perspective — and fans immediately took to the internet with their disgust and rage.
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There were dozens of fan theories about who was killed and who survived, and up until now it has been totally fine to speculate online about who was offed in the episode. The murdered individual has even become known in TWD circles as “the Lucille victim.”
AMC has threatened to sue a TWD fansite over what the network views as spoilers.
The Spoiling Dead Fans posted to its Facebook page today, saying that AMC has been in contact with them, and not for good reasons.
It seems that any predictions at all, even based in complete fantasy, are considered copyright infringement. AMC claims that the fansite somehow got hold of top-secret information, and will sue if they release that information.
“AMC tells us that we made some claim somewhere that says we received ‘copyright protected, trade secret information about the most critical plot information in the unreleased next season of The Walking Dead’ and that we announced we were going to disclose this protected information. We still aren’t sure where we supposedly made this claim because they did not identify where it was.”
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“Basically what it all comes down to is if we post our Lucille Victim prediction and we’re right, AMC says they will sue us,” the post continues. “Whether there are grounds for it or not is not the issue, it still costs money to defend. That is the way our justice system works. Would we have defenses? Sure. But it also costs money to mount that defense. If someone brings us a potential Lucille spoiler and we confirm it and it turns out accurate we could get sued.”
The Spoiling Dead Fans will continue to post information, theories and explanations of TWD events, but in light of the threat from AMC, will no longer be addressing the Lucille victim.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC in October.