The Walking Dead is killing Carl Grimes.
There had been chatter about Chandler Riggs leaving the show for awhile, but this season’s midseason finale finally turned rumor into reality. Back in December, it was revealed that Carl had been bitten by a walker, and given the location of the bite, there doesn’t seem to be any alternative to the inevitable. When the show returns in February we will see the resolution of this reveal, but what’s the point of continuing without Carl as part of the show?
It can be easy to dismiss The Walking Dead as simply another zombie apocalypse story. Even if you caught the hook that “We are the walking dead,” as Rick Grimes famously put it, there is still so much more to it when it comes to Rick and Carl.
At its core The Walking Dead is predominantly a story about living, and about legacy. It’s not just enough for Rick to lock his family away in a house and scrounge out an existence, because that’s no way to live. Instead, he is constantly looking for an eden, a paradise where his family can live and thrive, and not just survive. It’s why Maggie and Glenn get married and choose to have a baby. It’s what guides Rick through every confrontation with each oppressive villain his group comes across.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road shares a lot in common with The Walking Dead, as it also centers around a father ensuring his son’s survival in the wake of the apocalypse. In McCarthy’s story, the man and boy find a bunker filled with food and supplies, but they continue on toward some unknown destination where they think they will be safe. It’s not just about surviving, it’s also about living, and a bunker is no place to live.
It is the same for Rick and Carl. They could have locked themselves away in some small corner of the world long ago, but that’s not how you secure a genuine legacy. Instead, Rick and his group try to eke out a living at Hershel’s farm, and then the prison, and then Woodbury, and then Alexandria, until fighting for that eden costs them everything.
In the beginning, shortly after the zombie apocalypse arrived, Rick had an entire family. He found Lori, strived to keep Carl safe, and even attempted to bring life into the world with the birth of Judith. However, the harshness of this new world took Lori and Judith away from him, leaving him a broken man. In a way, Carl is his only link to his former sense of humanity. While Carl is very much his own character, growing and changing with each new experience, he also represents the idea that there is something still worth fighting for in this world.
If Carl is destined to die now, what becomes of Rick? Where does his motivation to rise up against Negan come from? How does he summon the will to go on? What is there left to live for? Without Carl to represent some kind of hope in such a dark world, why are we even tuning in anymore? And why are they still making more episodes?
In The Road, the entire purpose of the story was for the father to secure a future for his son. We knew the man was dying, so all the focus was on saving the boy, and though there were twists and turns, we knew he would survive. Otherwise, what’s the point? Securing a future for Carl is the whole point of the exercise in Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead comic. If he were to die, where do you even go from there?
In discussing the decision to kill Carl, Kirkman mentioned his initial apprehension at the idea. However, he eventually got on board and now he’s telling fans, “We are supposed to be worried about what comes next, and anticipating what comes next, and stressing about what comes next.” But if Carl is dead, so too is the dream. We’ll have reached the Game Over screen, and it’s time to try again. There is no The Walking Dead without Carl.
Trying to continue filming a show after the departure of a key cast member is something AMC has done before. Hell on Wheels featured an important dichotomy between Anson Mount’s Cullen Bohanan and Common’s Elam Ferguson, but when Common left the show and Elam was killed off, the series lost the heart it once had for the rest of its run. AMC is in danger of suffering the same fate once again with the killing of Carl.
The Walking Dead has already been renewed for a ninth season, and as Kirkman discussed, there are plans for the show’s post-Carl reality. The Walking Dead television show is distinctly not Kirkman’s comic book, though, so it doesn’t necessarily have to follow the rules that the book established. In the TV show, for example, Judith still lives, making her one potential way out of the narrative pitfall the series has dropped itself into.
Though she has mainly existed as a prop to this point, a time jump could effectively place her into the role Carl has held since the series’ inception. An older Judith could conceivably take on the storytelling burden Carl once shouldered, but that would forever keep her in the shadow of her brother, as the Plan B and the replacement child, to both the audience and her father.
Executive producer Greg Nicotero believes the show will give fans “an opportunity to make some peace with it.” However, what seems to be forgotten is that AMC already did this before, and like Hell on Wheels, The Walking Dead will be missing some of its former magic without Carl. Given the series’ plummeting ratings, is it really worth trying to carry on without the heart and soul of the show? At the end of the day, what are we still holding onto?