The Walking Dead Struts to Life With First Gay Kiss

Photo: Courtesy of AMC

AMC's The Walking Dead introduced its first gay couple, and with them, its first gay kiss. And it was a doozy. This wasn't one of those innocent quick network peck on the lips. This was a "We found love in a hopeless place" job.

Stranger danger Aaron (Ross Marquand) led Rick and the gang to his community, Alexandria, but before they could get there, he had to tend to his wounded lover, Eric (Jordan Woods-Robinson). Aaron quickly flashed his own Badass Credentials when he took out the backdoor of a car, and Michonne in the process, when he suspected Eric was in trouble.

Turns out Eric just had a sprained ankle and the couple are happily reunited. But group leader, and possessor of the sexiest beard on TV, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is still wary of Aaron and Eric, but in all fairness, Rick is wary of everyone.

Marquand and Woods-Robinson didn't have much time to get to know one another, but as Marquand told The Daily Beast, they gave a lot of thought to Aaron and Eric's relationship:

We really did our best to create a backstory for these two men. It’s not expressly laid out in the comics how long they’ve known each other. Did they know each other before the apocalypse began? We wanted to think they did. We thought it was a stronger choice that they had known each other before everything went to hell. It’s a really endearing love story that way, that these two men had bonded beforehand and then stuck together and protected each other throughout this really difficult time in human history. It’s not unlike any other relationship—there’s fights that occur, there’s little squabbles about how to approach a group. “Should we approach this group? What do you think of these people? Can we trust them?” There’s going to be disagreements. It was enormously helpful to discuss that with each other before we shot any of those scenes.

Hopefully, Aaron and Eric will stick around a while. But seriously, give this beard a spin-off series:

A version of this article by, Les Fabian Brathwaite, the unshaven dead, originally appeared on Out.