The Walking Dead is famous for killing off almost all of its beloved characters during its 11-season run, along with its many spinoffs, but there's one character Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead comic series and executive producer of the TV series, kept trying to kill off but couldn't.
While speaking at Annecy, Kirkman revealed that Daryl Dixon, played by the great Norman Reedus, was one character Kirkman tried to kill off many times early in the series, according to Deadline.
"When we started on Walking Dead I was the lunatic in the writers’ room who was like, ‘I don’t know, just kill the main character, who cares? We’ll do something weird.' I was pushing to kill Daryl Dixon for a while. Any character in The Walking Dead at some point I was in the writers’ rooms saying, ‘Why don’t we kill them today?’.”
While this might seem like the least surprising admission from Kirkman, it's definitely interesting considering just how popular Daryl became in The Walking Dead and how awesome The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, the spinoff series, has been for AMC and the franchise. It's definitely been a huge success across the board.
The Walking Dead could have killed off Daryl Dixon, but they didn't
Looking back at the early seasons, there were so many opportunities to kill off Daryl, but the show never went for it. Daryl comes closest to death early in the series when he gets injured while looking for Sophia when an arrow goes through his abdomen. He has to fight off some walkers and get back to the farm, but he looks like he's a walker. Andrea (Laurie Holden) shoots at him from a great distance, but she just misses.
Then, in season 3, Daryl gets captured at Woodbury and nearly killed before Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), Michonne (Danai Gurira), and the gang come back to save him. He could have easily died during any of that
The Walking Dead's willingness, and lack thereof at times, to kill off key characters was a blessing for the franchise, but it was also a curse in some ways.
Honestly, I do think that, eventually, Kirkman's and the franchise's attitude about killing characters off actually hurt the series. There are a lot of deaths in The Walking Dead that were delivered purely for shock value, and while those things can be fun, it often led the story in different directions that are definitely debatable.
There were so many characters who were not supposed to die when they did, and that created a lot of story problems later in the series. How do you keep a key moment or something iconic from the comics when that character is no longer around? That's the big question.
On top of that, retaining viewership gets challenging. Of course, The Walking Dead had great numbers throughout the run, but when fans' favorite characters died, viewership dropped. In that way, it's clear that some of the choices didn't work out from a business, or narrative, perspective.
All in all, it's great that The Walking Dead didn't say goodbye to Daryl Dixon. Instead, they let Reedus run with the character, and it worked out splendidly.
Unfortunately, though, we almost have reached the end of the road. Daryl Dixon is coming to an end after season 4, which will happen later this year. Reedus already said farewell to his character on Instagram.
We'll share more updates about the final season of Daryl Dixon when we find out.
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