Why The Walking Dead’s Rosita death hit so hard can be explained by one simple number. Fans of AMC’s long-running zombie apocalypse drama were prepared for some of their favorite characters to meet their ends as, last month, the show wrapped up its eleventh and final season. But even the hardest of the TWD hardcores weren’t quite ready for the moving scene in which Christian Serratos’ long-time character Rosita said goodbye to her friends and lovers before succumbing to a zombie bite.But Rosita’s death wasn’t only gut-wrenching in terms of on-screen drama. Just the fact that Rosita was killed off at all represented a big blow to fans of the character, who may have been hoping her story would continue in a spinoff. Indeed, Rosita spinoff boosters have a number on their side that makes the case for why Serratos’ character should have been kept around beyond the Walking Dead series finale. Twitter account @twalkingdeadworld recently posted the episode counts for all the show’s major characters, and the rundown proves just how central Rosita was to the show. With 94 episodes, Rosita actually finished behind only core characters Daryl, Rick, Carol, Maggie and Michonne. See the relevant tweet in the space below:RELATED:Why The Walking Dead’s Biggest Series Finale Death HAD To Happen

What makes this Walking Dead rundown so compelling, and frustrating, for Rosita fans is that everyone above her either is set to appear in an upcoming spinoff or, in the case of Carol, was going to appear before the actor decided to bow out. Given this, a case can clearly be made that Rosita was central enough to the show to warrant consideration for her own spinoff, or perhaps a tandem spinoff with another character like Eugene or Gabriel. It may be extra-painful for Rosita fans to think of a divisive character like Negan being allowed to continue, even though he appeared in 30 fewer episodes than fan-favorite Rosita.

But why in fact was the popular Rosita not given her own Walking Dead spinoff? One possible reason may be that Serratos herself was not interested. In fact, Serratos revealed in a recent interview with EW that she herself actually pitched the idea of killing Rosita to showrunner Angela Kang. “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,” Serratos said in explaining why she thought it made sense for Rosita to die.

It’s also undeniably true that Rosita, despite her status as one of the most-featured characters on TWD, never felt like she was truly central to the drama, at least not in the same way as Daryl, Maggie, Rick and Michonne. So it’s in a way understandable that Rosita would not have been singled out by Scott Gimple and company as a TWD Universe character whose story needed to continue. Indeed, Rosita’s death gave that The Walking Dead series finale a lot of extra punch, and as Serratos herself said, the episode needed to break fans hearts one last time. Ultimately, Rosita was arguably the perfect character to kill off in the finale. Fans loved her enough to be moved by her death, but at the same time, her story wasn’t necessarily pivotal enough to warrant spinoff exploration, despite her being in so many episodes.