Will Telltale kill off Clementine in A New Frontier?

Warning, this article contains major spoilers for the first two season of The Walking Dead: A Telltale Series.

Introduction

Clementine, poor Clementine. The zombie apocalypse started when she was only 8 years old. With her parents away, she had to be looked after by a stranger. Since then, everyone Clementine cares about has died leaving only AJ and Kenny (depends on your choices).

When I played the first season in 2013, Clementine captured my heart as the sweet innocent child forced to grow up in a world filled with dead people who feed on human flesh. Throughout the first two seasons, she has grown up to become a survivor.

With season 3 releasing soon, it came to my mind that Telltale could kill off Clementine in the newest season and I give 3 reasons why.

The finger

The first point that I will discuss is Clementine's finger. In some of the media that Telltale have released, Clementine has lost one of her fingers but in the other media they have released she still has it. To see what I mean, look at these images:

In the first image, Clementine has a finger missing but she hasn't lost her finger in the second image. The first trailer for the game also shows Clementine without a finger.
The fact that Clementine can either have or not have that finger missing shows that whether she gets to keep her finger is determined on our choices. If Clementine was to survive past the third season then Telltale would have to make another season of her with two different models (one with a finger and one without) based on our choices in the previous season. This would be time consuming for Telltale having to always change parts of their games to make Clementine not have a finger or have a finger.

Lets go back to Lee Everett from season 1 for a minute. In episode 5, it is based on player choice whether Lee gets his arm chopped off or not and Lee didn't make it past the first season. So the only other time a character has had a major change because of player choices, they have died. This shows that Clementine is likely to die in A New Frontier.

Javier

Javier has got quite a lot of hate from Telltale fans as many of them want to play solely as Clementine and not as him. Javier is the main playable character in A New Frontier whereas Clementine is still playable but only at certain points of the game.

The fact that they are introducing a new playable character is more evidence for Clementine's death. If we play as Clementine the whole season and then she dies, Telltale wouldn't have anyone else for us to play as and would have to make us play as another random survivor with no link to the current story. However, if they introduce us to another playable character in A New Frontier then they can carry on his story after Clementine's death. The fact that they have made Javier the main character is slowly getting Clementine out of the picture which will reduce the impact that her death has on the players (personally, I will still cry myself to sleep if Clementine dies).

Clementine has been through all stages

In the first season of The Walking Dead, Clementine didn't know how to survive and we had to play as a man who looked after her and trained her to be a survivor. In the second season, we played as Clementine when she had become a survivor and had to look after herself. In the third season, we will see Clementine survive through the eyes of another character and she will now take the job of the protector, looking after AJ. So throughout the season, she has gone from a child who needed a carer to a survivor to a carer herself. We have seen her through all these major stages and so Telltale are ready to kill her off.

Do I want Clementine to die?

That is a very hard question. Of course on the outside I don't want Clementine to die. We have seen her become a survivor since she was young and has burnt her place into my heart. Her death would probably make me very emotional just like Lee's death did (I cried when Lee died). I would hate to see her die. However, one of the reasons I play Telltale games is for the emotional affect it has on me. Clementine dying would match up to the shock that Lee's death had which is what I want in a Telltale game.

I only hope that if Telltale do decide to kill off Clementine, that she goes out with a bang. She needs to die protecting the people she loves and for a good reason. I hope Telltale only kill off Clementine if they feel like it would have the affect they are looking for, not just for the shock factor.

Do you think A New Frontier will be Clementine's end? And do you want Clementine to die? Let us know down in the comments below.