Video games usually give you a power fantasy, but Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season Two decided to give us a panic attack instead. It all comes down to a snowy, blood-stained rest stop and a choice that still divides the fanbase over a decade later. Do you shoot Kenny or look away? It’s a mess. There is no "good" ending here, only different shades of trauma for Clementine, a child who has already seen her world burn several times over.
Kenny is a ticking time bomb. You know it. I know it. By the time the group reaches the final episodes of Season Two, the "Boat God" from Savannah has been replaced by a man grieving so hard he’s become a danger to everyone around him. But then there’s Jane. She’s cold, cynical, and—as it turns out—manipulative in a way that feels particularly slimy. When these two collide in the blizzard, the game stops being about survival and starts being about what kind of person you want Clem to become.
The Breaking Point: What Actually Happens in the Final Confrontation
To understand why this choice carries so much weight, we have to look at the context. The group is falling apart. Tensions between Kenny’s volatile leadership and Jane’s "lone wolf" survivalism have reached a boiling point. When Jane returns from the snow without AJ, the newborn baby, Kenny loses it. He assumes Jane killed the child or left him to die.
They fight. It’s ugly. It’s not a cinematic duel; it’s a desperate, clumsy struggle in the dirt.
Kenny eventually gets the upper hand. He’s over Jane, knife in hand, ready to end it. This is where the prompt appears. You have a split second to pull the trigger on a man who has been your protector since day one, or you can let him commit a murder. If you shoot Kenny, you save Jane, only to find out moments later that AJ is alive. Jane hid him in a car to "prove" how dangerous Kenny was. If you look away, Kenny kills Jane, discovers the baby is safe, and is immediately hollowed out by the realization of what he’s done.
Why People Choose to Shoot Kenny
Honestly, Kenny was terrifying toward the end. If you’re playing Clementine as a girl who prioritizes the safety of the group, Kenny is a liability. He’s erratic. He screams at children. He beats Arvo—who, granted, wasn't a saint—to a bloody pulp in a way that felt unnecessary and cruel.
When you pull that trigger, it’s often an act of mercy. Kenny’s soul died back in that alleyway in Savannah with Duck and Katjaa; the man we see in the snow is just a shell held together by rage and grief. Many players feel that shooting him is the only way to stop the cycle of violence. It’s a clean break.
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The dialogue if you shoot him is some of the most heartbreaking writing in gaming history. He doesn't hate you for it. He says, "You did the right thing," and "I'm sorry." It’s a moment of clarity for him. He’s tired. He’s finally at peace. For many, this is the "canon" ending because it completes Kenny’s tragic arc with a sense of closure that survival doesn't offer him.
The Problem With Jane
Saving Jane feels right for about thirty seconds. Then you hear the baby cry.
Jane’s deception is a massive betrayal of trust. She put a newborn’s life at risk in a freezing blizzard just to "win" an argument and isolate Clementine from Kenny. It’s gaslighting on a grand scale. If you choose her, you’re choosing a mentor who believes that everyone is a burden and that emotional ties are weaknesses. It’s a cynical way to live. A lot of players who shot Kenny ended up abandoning Jane immediately after finding the baby because her actions were just too psychotic to forgive.
The Case for Looking Away
Then there are the Kenny loyalists. If you look away, you are essentially saying that loyalty outweighs morality. Kenny is family. In a world where everyone dies or leaves, Kenny stayed. He’s the last link to Lee Everett.
Looking away is a passive act, but its consequences are violent. Jane dies. It’s a gruesome scene. But what follows is arguably the best ending in the entire series: the trek to Wellington.
If you stay with Kenny, you eventually reach the gates of a walled community. They have room for the kids, but not for him. Here, Kenny shows the man he used to be. He begs the guard to take Clementine and AJ, sacrificing his own safety and future just to ensure they have a bed and a meal. It’s a redemptive moment that you completely miss if you kill him at the rest stop. It proves that, despite his flaws, his love for those kids was the most real thing left in that world.
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Psychological Impact: The "Good" Choice Doesn't Exist
Let’s talk about the data for a second. Telltale’s own metrics usually showed a fairly even split, though it often leaned slightly toward Kenny. Why? Because humans are wired for tribalism. We forgive "our" people for things we’d execute a stranger for.
Jane was a stranger. Kenny was the guy who stayed in the fridge with us when Larry was having a heart attack.
But from a child development perspective—which is a weird way to look at a zombie game, I know—Clementine is traumatized either way. If she kills Kenny, she carries the guilt of murdering her father figure. If she lets Kenny kill Jane, she witnesses a brutal homicide and realizes her protector is a killer.
- Option A: Shoot Kenny. You lose your history but gain a cold, hard lesson in survival.
- Option B: Look away. You keep your "family" but at the cost of your soul and Jane's life.
- Option C: The "Alone" Ending. You can actually kill Kenny and then leave Jane, or let Kenny kill Jane and then leave him. This is the "hardened" Clem path.
Most people don't realize that the "Alone" ending is actually incredibly empowering for Clementine's character. She stops relying on broken adults to save her. She takes the baby, walks into the woods, and decides she’s enough. It sets up her personality in Season Three and The Final Season perfectly.
Technical Nuance: How This Choice Affects Future Seasons
Telltale got a lot of flak for how they handled these choices in A New Frontier (Season Three). Regardless of what you chose, the game basically "reset" your status by killing off whoever you stayed with in a flashback.
If you went with Jane, she dies by suicide after discovering she’s pregnant. It’s bleak. If you went with Kenny, he dies in a car crash—a death many fans felt was a slap in the face to such a monumental character.
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Because of this, the "Wellington" ending (where you stay at the camp and Kenny walks away into the snow) is widely considered the most respectful ending for his character. He doesn't die on screen. He just... disappears. It leaves his fate ambiguous, which is a rare mercy in this universe.
What Most People Get Wrong About Jane
People love to hate Jane, but let's be fair. She wasn't wrong about Kenny being a danger. She was just wrong about how to prove it. She saw a man who was one bad day away from hurting Clementine, and she wasn't entirely mistaken. Kenny's temper was a liability. If you look at the series as a whole, Jane represents the "new world" where you have to be cold to survive, while Kenny represents the "old world" of family and blind loyalty.
Neither of them is a "good" guardian. That’s the point. Lee was the perfect middle ground, and when he died, the moral compass of the series broke.
Actionable Insights for Your Playthrough
If you are playing through this for the first time—or replaying the definitive edition—here is how to approach the "shoot Kenny or look away" dilemma based on the story you want to tell:
- For the most emotional closure: Shoot Kenny. The dialogue in his final moments is arguably the best in the game. It allows him to die as a human being rather than a monster.
- For the best long-term narrative: Look away, but stay with Kenny until you reach Wellington. Then, choose to stay at Wellington. This gives Kenny a beautiful arc of self-sacrifice and keeps Clementine safe in a way that feels earned.
- For a "Hardened Clementine" run: Shoot Kenny, then leave Jane. This makes the most sense for a Clementine who has realized that adults are unreliable and that she must forge her own path to protect AJ.
- Avoid the "Stay with Jane" ending: Honestly? It’s the least satisfying. The flashback in Season Three is depressing and doesn't offer the same character growth as the other paths.
The choice to shoot Kenny or look away isn't about who is right. It’s about what Clementine can live with. It’s a test of the player's empathy versus their survival instincts. Whether you view Kenny as a tragic hero or a dangerous loose cannon, the fact that we are still debating this years later proves just how deeply Telltale tapped into the complexity of human relationships under pressure.
Next time you find yourself at that rest stop, don't look for the "right" button. There isn't one. Just think about what Lee would have wanted for her, and realize that even he probably wouldn't have known what to do.
To prep for the transition to Season Three, make sure you've exported your save correctly or used the "Story Builder" feature. The choices you make in the snow will ripple through Clementine’s scars—literally and figuratively—for the rest of her life. Take a moment to sit with the silence after the credits roll. You’ll need it.