Some characters in The Walking Dead are easy to live without. Over the years, there are more than a few that fans have basically just forgotten about. Other exits were so heartbreaking and made us want to cry our eyes out for weeks on end.
No? Was that just me with Beth (Emily Kinney)? Anyway! But then there are some that you can never really recover from, and for me, that was always Carl (Chandler Riggs).
After his death in season 8, The Walking Dead was never the same.
The series was already declining, but ratings plummeted after
A few things kept The Walking Dead alive for some time. Season 6 was decent, but with Negan’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) arrival, we knew things were about to go down. With the season 7 premiere, we had not only Abraham’s (Michael Cudlitz) death but Glenn’s death, as well.
That was the beginning, when ratings began to decline because, yes, people did love Glenn and were upset by the fake-out where they killed two people instead of just the normal one person we would have had from the comics. However, some fans still stuck around for the Saviors and wanted to see what would happen.
Then, the season 8 mid-season premiere came around, and Carl died. No one expected it, and fans were, quite frankly, furious. The comic series was about Rick and what he would do for his son, and that carried into the final years, when Carl is grown up and talks to his own children about what Rick did and his role in the series.
Then, in season 8, they decided to take him away with barely any real reason. How do you make that decision?
Carl's death wasn’t as meaningful as it could have been
I also believe a big reason fans hate Carl’s death is that it’s the most stupid way that he could have died in this world: he was bitten.
In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it’s better than getting ripped apart by walkers or shot in the chest only to bleed out. At that point in the series, Carl had plenty of training with walkers and knew how to defend himself. Him getting bitten just felt like a cop-out death for him instead of giving him something honorable.
Yes, he did get bitten trying to get a doctor for Alexandria. He was trying to do the right thing. But after everything Carl had gone through, it felt like the worst death imaginable for him. If anything, he should have gone out to defend Alexandria with his dad instead of getting bitten out in the woods and hiding until he couldn't anymore.
The reasoning for his death isn’t sound
The creators and writers of The Walking Dead TV series said the main reason Carl was killed was because of Rick and to spare Negan in the show. Apparently, the reason Rick spared Negan in the comics wasn’t dramatic enough for them.
That’s not how it is in the comics at all because it’s Carl’s wish, straight to his father’s face, that he spares Negan, that mercy is better than wrath. Negan lives because Carl and Rick work together in the comics, not because Carl requested it in some letter he left for his father.
Their partnership would have been so much better, and the fact that they decided to kill him off really bothers me. Riggs himself even said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he thought series showrunner Scott M. Gimple was joking when he said Carl was to die:
“I honestly thought he was joking the first time he said it, because Scott has a pretty good sense of humor and we joke around a lot. So I thought he was joking. When I realized he wasn’t, it was quite the shocker, because I was really looking forward to doing the comic book story arc with another group, the Whisperers. Carl has a really, really cool interaction with one of the members of that whole group, and I was super excited to do that whole storyline.”
And it’s a shame because I know exactly who that is, and it would have been amazing. *sigh.*
Either way, it’s still a shame that this even happened. If Carl had been around much longer, it would have been a different show, and I really believe it would have kept a lot of the fanbase that, at the very least, stayed for his interactions as he grew up. I suppose we’ll have to live with what we have until someone inevitably reboots the franchise.
You can stream all 11 seasons of The Walking Dead on Netflix.
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