Well, any decisions regarding the scripts for season three would have been made long ago before it even started airing, so the fan reactions won't have any impact until season four.
Regarding characters and the doom-laden chopping block:
As Mazzara said about
not killing off Hershel in season two (partly to do with
having to kill of Dale), if they had done, it would have been gratuitous and only for "shock value" - so I don't believe they'd go for "shock value" deaths as that is cheap and lacks meaning. T-Dog was a hero's death, and you
need someone to die as a result of Andrew's actions (and in-turn, Rick not directly killing Andrew) ... then of course, the natural direction to go for maximum drama is to have the birth at the worst time, and that death has big dramatic pay offs for multiple characters.
Carl is further torn from his childhood, Maggie is traumatised, Rick loses his wife and goes nuts, Carol (now) can repurpose her mothering skills for Judith and continue to be the heart and emotional core of the group, and so on...
Now, characters - let's see...
Rick - you can't kill him, it's extremely important that he's the leader and we see the continued effects of the apocalypse on this man from the start: it just keeps chipping away at him.
Carl - a child before the apocalypse who is thrown into a perverse adulthood in a deadly world. He's extremely important to keep around, plus the whole father/son dynamic.
Glenn - a great everyman cipherr, capable of a lot, but not the centre of attention. I share the opinions, outlook, and direction of Rick, but I'd imagine I'd be more of a Glenn in a similar situation. Capable, but not up-front unless needed there. His relationship with Maggie is key too - theirs is one born
after the apocalypse, which is a really interesting dynamic. All the other relationships were being torn asunder by the apocalypse (e.g. Rick and Lori), but here's one being created as a result of it. Glenn and Maggie are tightly linked as a pairing too.
Maggie - see above, but also I can't see them killing her off as you'd get more mileage out of the emotional damage caused by this ordeal ... not to go into it, but there is definitely fertile ground from the comics to explore regarding Maggie and emotional torment. She's also ruddy handy in a fight.
Carol - the aforementioned heart and emotional core of the group. It's important to have someone who is perhaps receiving more than she's giving (in terms of survivalism). Kirkman has said that Carol was always someone in the comics who was one of the least capable for surviving in such a setting, so really, it's a real struggle for her and that's interesting. Here though she can now really help out with the mothering aspect - that wonderfully performed scene between McBride and Lincoln illustrated this.
Daryl - too beloved by fans and far too capable in survivalism to go down at this stage. I can see it happening
sometime, but hopefully far into the future, and in extremely high stakes. In the context of being utterly and hopelessly overwhelmed/outnumbered/cornered, or perhaps more likely, in the process of saving the lives of others (a hero's death) ... but it'd be foolish to kill him off this season, and still foolish next season. I hope he's around for a very long time!
Hershel - valuable medical skills, but he could be on the chopping block at some point this season. Could we see the doctor from Woodbury joining Team Prison at some point? He does provide the worldly wise voice of an old sage though (as Dale once was). Age and wisdom are good to have.
Beth - hasn't been able to do an awful lot. Would like to see more of her in the show (the sweet little exchanges between her and Carl is a cute side-line). She's waiting to find a niche in this world for sure.
Michonne - too handy in a fight. It makes sense that Maggie replaced her in the interrogation as Michonne is so suspicious she'd be unlikely to end up in that situation (plus Merle lied about her dying).
Andrea - too handy with a gun, we need to see her re-team with the prison lot, and she's hot for damaged leader figures ... Rick's a single man again after all.
Merle - I can definitely see Daryl having to kill his brother, or perhaps
allow his brother to die in a binary choice situation. I can see that being a dramatic high point of this season. Merle's deeds have rendered him as high risk for the chopping block.
Milton - we've not seen enough of him yet. I like his character and would like to see much more of him in the show as time progresses.
Axel & Oscar - we've only just got them in the show, so they're surely safe for now. We've not had much time with them.
Judith the Baby - well, a baby is pretty defenceless.
So anyway ... point being that there's so much to be done with so many of these characters and a shock value death isn't what the show aims to do. It
has to be integral to the plot to kill someone off, and you don't want to lose beloved central protagonists who have so much more to give.
I'm wondering if they think that the audience will be expecting a death in the mid-season finale, and then
not have one. I'd be down for that - too many deaths takes too many dramatic options away, and you don't want to let your audience become inured to such events. Better to leave the tension-filled threat of impending doom hanging over everyone's head for the most part, and only swinging the axe when it is absolutely necessary (and makes a lot of sense).
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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