With their latest mid-season finale, The Walking Dead proved they are able to kill off nearly anyone on the show, no matter how popular they may be. This time around it was Carl Grimes who took a walker bite to the chest, leading him to a slow death via infection. It was a pretty bold move for the show and major departure from the comics, where Carl continues to sneak out of the house and cause endless amounts of trouble to this day.
Chandler Riggs talked about his character Carl’s impending death with The Hollywood Reporter and clarified a couple of points regarding how it all came to be. First off, it was not his idea and it was not the result of his decision to go to college. It was showrunner Scott Gimple that made that decision, and Riggs learned about it in June as they worked through rehearsals for season eight’s episodes.
“It was devastating for me and my family because the show has been such a huge part of my life for so long,” he said. “For a few days, we didn’t know what to do … I decided that I wanted to not go to college for at least a year and move to L.A. and focus on acting and music. It ended up being a great thing because now I get to do all kinds of other stuff that I haven’t been able to do in the last eight years.”
Riggs explained The Walking Dead producer’s reasoning for Carl’s death, but spoiler warning, Chandler reveals serious spoilers for the comics.
In the comics, Rick eventually captures Megan but decides to keep him alive in a cell rather than execute him. According to Chandler, the show needed something really powerful to drive Rick’s decision to keep Megan alive.
“Scott was trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between Rick not wanting to kill Negan and Rick also really wanting to kill Negan,” Riggs said. “Scott’s way to get around that was to make Carl this really humanitarian figure and a person who could see the good in people and see that people can change and not everyone out there is bad.”
“That’s what Carl’s talk to Rick was in this episode: there’s no way that they can kill every one of the Saviors and not everyone is a bad person and there has to be some way forward than just killing people.”
It sounds like Carl’s death will inspire Rick to become a more moral person in the future.
“I was excited to do a lot of those storylines in the comics because there’s a lot of really cool stuff,” he said. But Riggs sounds pretty optimistic about having a life outside of The Walking Dead. “I’m more excited to do other things than The Walking Dead than I was excited about doing those things on Walking Dead.”
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