The Walking Dead delivered one of the most significant deaths of its entire run in the recent midseason finale. The final moments of the episode revealed that Carl Grimes had been bitten by a walker – a sure sign that he didn’t have long left to live. And just in case we had any doubt, it was later confirmed that, yes, the character will be written out when season 9 returns next year.
It’s a massive shake-up to the AMC series, as Carl is one of the few people left who’s been part of the zombie drama from the beginning. Actor Chandler Riggs started work on The Walking Dead when he was only 10-years-old, and he’s now exiting the show as an 18-year-old, just about to start college.
Now, to celebrate the life of Rick’s son, one fan has made this moving tribute to him, reminding us just how much the character has grown over the past eight years. Living in a post-apocalyptic world is no picnic, and Carl had to toughen up from a very young age due to the many personal setbacks he had to overcome – his mother’s death, the loss of his eye – but he always managed to stay brave and to keep fighting.
Of course, for some fans, the loss of Carl isn’t just sad but is indicative of The Walking Dead making the wrong creative decisions. In the comics from Robert Kirkman, Grimes Jr. remains alive and well, even taking a much more involved role amongst the group of survivors.
As such, a popular fan petition has been started and calls for Carl’s death to be undone and for showrunner Scott Gimple to be fired. Though AMC is highly unlikely to concede to these demands, it might make them shy away from killing off any other long running characters for a while.
Or maybe they’ll do the opposite and kill them all? We’ll just have to wait and see what happens when The Walking Dead returns for its midseason premiere on February 25th, 2018.