A character’s death in The Walking Dead TV universe doesn’t necessarily mean the show won’t draw from material from the comics including that person. We’ve seen it several times in the show’s history. Take Andrea and Carol, for example. In the comics, Andrea becomes Rick’s girlfriend while Carol commits suicide by walker. In the TV series, Andrea dies during the encounter with the Governor, while Carol is very much alive. So losing Carl isn’t necessarily as consequential to the story as you’d like it to be.
Yes, Carl’s death will devaste viewers who’ve watched the character grow over eight seasons. But he hasn’t had the same storylines in TV series that he’s had in The Walking Dead comics. Carl has slowly become less vital to Rick’s story. There are other goals that drive him, not just protecting Carl. And Robert Kirkman has a harsh truth for those thinking Carl’s death means the epic comic story arcs like the Whisperers won’t happen,.
“There are big, huge stories coming up that you might think will be massively altered because of the absence of Carl,” Kirkman recently told Entertainment Weekly . “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.”
While the loss of Carl will have an emotional impact on fans, the story will go on. Just like it did when we lost Andrea, Tyrese, Herschel, Glenn, Abraham and other characters before him. Carl isn’t really needed to progress the show, but he lives on in the comics. But at least Daryl is still alive. The story is really over when Rick dies, which seems the most likely way the show will end at this point.
The Walking Dead needs to build to an endpoint. Unlike shows like Game of Thrones , there’s no real end goal . The characters just want to survive another day. Hopefully Rick can manage to create a stable community, where people can rebuild and enjoy some kind of normalcy in their lives.
How do you think The Walking Dead should end? Let us know in the comments below. T he Walking Dead Season 8 returns Feb. 25.
