Why The Walking Dead Killed Off Chandler Riggs' Carl Grimes

"The Walking Dead" was a pretty bleak show, one that constantly killed off characters in brutal, gruesome ways. It was a show filled with monologues about how humanity is doomed to suffer. But there was one constant source of hope throughout the series that a lot of fans took for granted: trusty young Carl (Chandler Riggs), who represented a new generation of survivors who would grow up and take charge. 

Whereas Rick's generation grew up in comfort only to be tossed suddenly into hell, Carl's generation was growing up in hell and would live to see society rebuild itself. While most of the other young characters on the show went mad and/or died tragically, Carl managed to keep his wits about for nearly eight whole seasons. As bad as things got, even as the group stumbled across cannibals and dictators, Carl's development into a tough, courageous young man offered a lot of promise for the world's future. 

And then "The Walking Dead" killed him off in season 8. In the mid-season finale, "How It's Gotta Be," Carl revealed to Rick a walker bite on his torso that he got in a previous, seemingly throwaway scene. Or, as Chandler Riggs would describe it on Twitter afterward, "When u spend like 3 years in the apocalypse but die bc you tripped and fell."

Carl's death, which was inevitable after the bite reveal in the season 8a finale, was not concluded until the season 8b premiere, "Honor," where Carl shoots himself in the head to avoid turning into a walker. The episode was not well received by fans. They thought the show was descending into full-blown misery porn, and they wondered what the point was in all of Carl's moody teen storylines if it didn't lead somewhere satisfying. Comic Carl (who survives the whole thing) has his best arc in the Whisperers storyline, which the show hadn't done yet. Why kill him off before he could truly get his time to shine?

"It's all having to do with the greater story of the season," showrunner Scott Gimple explained at the time. "It will be very apparent, the relationship of this awful incident — this very intense story turn — to the greater story. I don't even need to answer because I know as you're watching it into the next half of the season that you'll get it. It has everything to do with what happens throughout the rest of season 8."

Having finished "The Walking Dead" season 8, it's easy to see what Gimple meant: Carl gets to share some parting words with Rick before he dies, and those words motivate Rick to spare the villainous Negan's life. You can argue that there were probably better ways to have Rick reach this point, but I suppose Carl's death at least gets the job done. Rick's decisions in the season 8 finale lead to a tense post-war situation in the first half of season 9, and paved the way for the compelling Maggie/Negan dynamic that in turn led to its own spinoff. 

The creator of the comics, Robert Kirkman, also defended the decision to kill Carl, even if it meant that major comic events would have to be altered:

"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 storylines 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."

And sure enough, Carl's future storylines were absorbed rather seamlessly by new kid character Henry and, after the mid-season 9 time jump, by Carl's younger sister Judith (Cailey Fleming). I for one would've preferred having Carl around — just as I would've preferred if Beth hadn't died needlessly in that hospital — but the show's final seasons at least managed to make the best of his absence.

The big rumor about Carl's death is that it came down to a behind-the-scenes conflict between Scott Gimple and Chandler Riggs. Or more accurately, between Gimple and Chandler's dad, William Riggs. "Watching Gimple fire my son 2 weeks before his 18th birthday after telling him they wanted him for the next 3 years was disappointing," Riggs wrote at the time. "I never trusted Gimple or AMC but Chandler did. I know how much it hurt him. But we do absolutely know how lucky we have been to be a part of it all and appreciate all the love from fans all these years!"

The theory in the "Walking Dead" fandom was that Gimple found William Riggs difficult to deal with, and that influenced his decision. The other theory was that Chandler, about to turn 18, was set to be paid more as an adult actor, giving the stingy execs at AMC a financial incentive to kill him off. Chandler Riggs has also occasionally implied this whole controversy was his fault: when a Redditor complained about his acting on the show's subreddit, Riggs responded saying, "I agree lol. I think I was decent for the first few years, but I definitely got lazy when I should've utilized the writers giving me more material." He later added, "TLDR: yeah I sucked when it mattered but I'm a good actor now I promise please someone hire me."

But even years later, the showrunners have maintained that they simply thought Carl's death was the best choice for the overall story, and not a reflection on Riggs' acting skills or anything involving his father. As Gimple explained at the time:

"This was a story turn, that's it. We did not receive a request [from any actor] or anything like that. This has everything to do with story. It's unbelievably difficult to lose someone you've worked with for as long as we've worked with him. It's been a really tough thing. We're hoping to be telling a story that's worthy of it."