The Walking Dead Creator Robert Kirkman Regrets Making One Episode

"The Walking Dead" is more than just a hit TV show, and it's more than just one of the most influential comic books in the history of the medium. It's become a surprisingly enduring multimedia franchise that helped to redefine the zombie genre in the 2010s. HBO missed out on turning "Walking Dead" into a TV series, but that loss turned into AMC's gain for 11 seasons. not to mention all of the spin-offs. It's a cable TV empire. So, does creator Robert Kirkman have any regrets? One episode in particular stands out in that regard.

Kirkman, who created the Image Comics series that inspired the TV show, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, at the height of the show's popularity. When asked about any regrets he might have, Kirkman explained that, provided the chance, he wouldn't have concluded the show's first season the way he did with a visit to the CDC. Why? Here's what Kirkman had to say about it:

"If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have done the CDC episode. It possibly gave away too much information and was such a big change very early on in the series. I've been careful in the comic series to not say what's happening in other parts of the world. It's something that's going to be fun to explore in the spin-off series. But the fact that France is mentioned in that episode and other things like that, I probably would have steered away from that stuff if I had to do it all over again."

"The Walking Dead" season 1 is still considered one of the show's best, and it ends with a particularly revealing episode titled "TS-19." The episode sees Rick and the group allowed into the CDC by the strange Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich). However, all is not what it seems in what appeared to be a haven for the survivors. The group learns that, essentially, every human now carries the virus and once they are dead, they will be reanimated. The CDC self-destructs by the end of the episode, with a bit of a hopeless vibe setting in.

While this episode answered some big questions that fans had and helped tee up some intrigue for season 2, Kirkman feels that it gave away too much. For what it's worth, he's very particular in how he dealt with the zombie apocalypse. For example, they never say "zombie" on "The Walking Dead," which is an intentional choice. Maintaining some mystery and keeping things relatively grounded was important to Kirkman.

The whole France thing came up again after the flagship show ended its run. Norman Reedus' Daryl Dixon went to France in his aptly-titled spin-off "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon." Not to say that wouldn't have happened otherwise, but the trip to France might have maintained a larger degree of mystery had that CDC arc never happened, at least in Kirkman's mind. Still, the show enjoyed a very healthy run and was, for a time, the biggest show on cable. It'd be hard to say the episode hurt the show in a significant way.

But how did this episode happen in the first place? In a 2010 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kirkman explained that in discussing the episode with writer/producer Frank Darabont, he was sold on the idea given that it reminded him of one of the greatest horror sequels ever made: George A. Romero's "Day of the Dead."

"When Frank was pitching the idea to me, saying he wanted to bring them to the CDC and telling me all the different things that he felt would come out of that story, the science of it all and the being trapped in the small location, I was very much picturing a lot of 'Day of the Dead' stuff. That's one of the reasons I was so on board with the idea."

You can grab "The Walking Dead Complete Series" on Blu-ray from Amazon.