Many series like ‘Game Of Thrones’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ are notorious for killing their characters. The Walking Dead is no different. At the onset of a zombie apocalypse, people are killed, it is completely normal, and fans of the drama appreciate that. But everyone was caught off-guard by season 8 when Carl dies. This sudden turn of events had the audience scratching their heads. People who have followed the comic since its inception were also dumbfounded since Carl was the future of the story with so many more stories to be told. The one who was supposed to carry the show—The face of the future. To most, it felt unnecessary, ‘why did carl die? Why did the character have to leave?’ have been asked.
The drama deals with the concepts of being human in the face of death and the survival of the fittest. And there is no argument it has left a lasting impact on its audience. The series starts with the protagonist Rick Grimes waking up from his coma to know that while he was sleeping, the world has been overrun by zombies called ‘walkers’. He sets out on a quest to find his wife, Loris, and his son, Carl, with his partner Shane Walsh. The series began in 2010, and its finale is scheduled to air on the 20th of November, 2022.
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Who Is Carl Grimes?
Carl was the deuteragonist of the American Television series The Walking Dead, which has been adapted from the comic series of the same name. He is one of the survivors of the zombie apocalypse that has come upon the human world due to a mutation, he is the son of Lori and Rick Grimes. Though the story centers around his father Rick, a former deputy sheriff, Carl is the most influential character of the series. Before his father wakes up from his coma, Carl and his mother presume him to be dead and join the Shane Walsh and travel to the Atlanta refugee camp. Carl sees bouts of character development within the drama as he is forced to grow up because of the loss of the people he cares for and the decaying environment around him where hope seems bleak.
He is shown to always be the first one to come forward to assist and protect the person he cares about, but he also becomes callous and brash, often getting his troupe in all kinds of trouble by making bad decisions. He is also at odds with his father when Rick returns alive, we understand that he is no longer the young, innocent boy he was when he left him but has grown to be self-centered and pessimistic. The most iconic aspect of the character is his relationship with his father, where the duo keeps going back and forth, restoring each other’s morality and keeping each other on balance between humanity and survival.
In both the comics and the series, Carl becomes the reason why Rick spares Negan and the Saviors, who have been forcing communities to pay tribute to them in exchange for protection from the walkers, but in the series, Carl convinces his father by giving him a version of the world where everyone lives peacefully before euthanizing himself to prevent from becoming a walker after getting bitten by one in the ribs, this death does not occur in the comics.
Chandler Riggs: The Actor Playing Carl Grimes
The young actor was born in 1999, meaning he was just 10 years old when he starred in the first season of this post-apocalyptic horror drama earning him the name ‘the kid who grew up on the set’. Chandler Riggs had previously starred in other horror projects like Jesus H. Zombie and had caught the eye of Gale Anne Hurd, the executive producer of The Wronged Man, while they shot together, and he decided to cast him for the role of Carl.
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The character soon became a big part of Chandler’s life which turned his life around. The actor shared with THR that he had bought a house in Senoia, near Georgia, where the show filmed its episodes when he received a call from the production that his character would be killed off soon. This devastated the 17-year-old causing him to take a year gap from his education and could no longer take the house. The actor said that he was never intimated that the series would be digressing from its comic book version so much, and the decision blindsided him.
The Actual Reason Behind Carl’s Death In The Walking Dead
Now, coming to the crux of the conflict. Why did Carl leave the Walking Dead? As said by Scott M. Gimple, the American writer for television and comics, also the writer for The Walking Dead, in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the plan to have Carl leave the show in 2017 was a creative choice. He explained that it was a difficult choice for the whole team to lose such a pivotal character whom you love so much but it had to be done to catalyze the internal development of Rick Grimes and to help him spare Negan from fulfilling his son’s dream for a better world. The writer had expressed grief towards the loss of the character but said that it was necessary to tell a worthwhile story.
Whether it was right or wrong to ax Carl from the series, the actor Chandler Riggs, who has now moved on to other drama gigs, has said that he still enjoys and watches The Walking Dead. Be sure to check out the series on Netflix.
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