carl grimes walking dead

Unless the creators of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead‘ have beaten the Internet and are trolling us we all know that Chandler Riggs will depart the show when it returns and the midseason premiere is getting an extended episode to say goodbye. We’ve seen Carl Grimes grow from boy to young adult in the show and many of the remaining diehard fans are overly annoyed that he’ll be departing the series, especially as Robert Kirkman has long stated that he’ll be the last survivor in the comics.

To do the character and actor justice who has slowly evolved from “Stay in the house Carl” to a skilled survivor in his own right, his final episode will have an 82-minute runtime as opposed to the standard 60-minute of most episodes. There is always the chance we’ll see him pop up in another flashback, memory, or vision but this will be the last time we see him alive.

I’m still rooting for that helicopter we previously saw to come, grab him, and take him away to a cure which would end up being a season or two down the line.

However, from what we can tell the surprise Walker Bite which Carl was carrying for a few episodes will finally manifest in the premiere and the actor will say goodbye. We know that Norman Reedus was annoyed by this turn of events saying:

“I was desperately unhappy about that. I’ve seen Chandler grow up from a little boy. I’ve known that kid so long, and it always hurts when you lose a family member on the show. Chandler is definitely a family member to me. I was not happy about it. I always thought Chandler would be the last man standing, to be honest.”

As mentioned above by Kirkman himself this has often been stated to be how the comics would pan out. Though, the series creator stresses that this won’t make any major changes to the upcoming story arcs as Kirkman shares:

“There are big, huge stories coming up that you might think will be massively altered because of the absence of Carl. But we have known these story lines have been coming for years. There are plans in place to make it all work. The loss of Carl doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to be losing big swaths of the comic book story. It means that there will be some differences to them. The goal is that those differences will be as exciting to the audience as they are to me.”

With Kirkman’s blessing, this might end up being okay after all. However, we won’t know until ‘The Walking Dead’ returns to infect AMC once more on February 25th, 2018.

Are you glad or annoyed that they’ve decided to kill off Carl Grimes on ‘The Walking Dead’? Do you feel that Chandler Riggs has ended up as a great actor? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Entertainment Weekly