Bloody, awful, messy deaths are par for the course on The Walking Dead, but thanks, in small part, to some unfortunate timing, the latest character to go carries some major cultural baggage. More on why this death will weigh heavily on The Walking Dead fandom after the spoiler warning. If you haven’t watched Season 6, Episode 14 “Twice As Far,” consider this your final warning.

A few weeks ago on the CW sci-fi drama The 100 a character named Lexa (played by Fear the Walking Dead star Alycia Debnam-Carey) died shortly after consummating her relationship with series lead Clarke (Eliza Taylor). This sparked massive outcry from the The 100 fandom who accused the show’s writers of falling back in a well-established trope known as “Bury Your Gays” or “Dead Lesbian Syndrome.” (The names are pretty self-explanatory, but you can go here for a pretty complete history of the trope in film, TV, literature, and more.) Now The Walking Dead has killed off one of their two lesbian characters, Dr. Denise Cloyd (Merritt Wever), with a nasty arrow to the eye. Another lesbian bites the dust. The timing couldn’t be worse, but the circumstances around Denise’s death only exacerbate the problem.

In the comics, it’s Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), not Denise, who dies with an arrow through his eye. The comic book version of Denise does die, yes, but a little later on down the line. And while being a lesbian doesn’t mean a character should be bulletproof—anyone and everyone should be ready to die on The Walking Dead—the writers did decide to swap the gay character in for the straight, white alpha male. They had to do a lot of plot contorting to get there, too. In the books, Denise dies while rushing to medically assist a friend from inside the walls of the compound. In the show, she dies out on a supply run trying to prove—like Eugene does elsewhere—that she can face her fears.

Related: How The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus Celebrated Eugene’s Big Bite

Just a two episodes ago, Denise told her girlfriend Tara (Alanna Masterson) she couldn’t go with her on an extended supply run saying, “I can’t. I need to be here, I’m the only doctor now. I can’t. But I want to.” This week Denise admits to Daryl and Rosita, “I could have gone with Tara. I could have told her I loved her but I didn’t because I was scared.” And just when she achieves romantic clarity (and a can of Crush for Tara) Denise dies.

So while Denise’s death didn’t come immediately after she and Tara consummated their relationship, it did interfere with her plans to tell Tara she loved her when they saw each other again. Masterson is off the show for at least a few weeks due to a pregnancy so we may have to wait to get the full poignant fall out from the latest Walking Dead tragedy. For now, Denise’s death largely serves as a poignant reminder to Daryl that he made a serious mistake letting his crossbow go.

It’s worth noting that the character of Tara doesn’t have an exact counterpart in the comics and that Denise on the page is straight. In fact she ultimately sacrifices herself in order to save her male lover, Heath. So this entire lesbian relationship—however brief—was a show invention and part of The Walking Dead’s recent attempts to be more sexually diverse. Last season saw Aaron (Ross Marquand) and Eric (Jordan Woods-Robinson) share a controversial same-sex kiss. But while Eric and Aaron are still alive and kicking, they are very much on the back burner and neither they nor their relationship has ever seriously factored into the main plot of The Walking Dead.