My Walking Dead Theory
*Spoilers galore* from the mid-season finale.
So, Carl is the next main character to die? The end of
season eight’s mid-season finale all but guaranteed as much. To save him now
would make the Glenn dumpster fake-out death of a few seasons ago look like
genius storytelling and not the gimmicky fraud that it was. Carl dying is shocking
to the WD faithful because of the amount of energy the show has put into
developing his character. He’s the next leader when Rick can no longer do it,
right? Killing yet another well-established character becomes all the more
devastating when you take into account the piss-poor job the show has done in
building interest in any new characters after Michone showed up in Season 4
(maybe it was season 3). I mean, does anyone even think about Rick’s daughter
at this point? What about the weird lady with the short bangs who runs the
group that, if it only cost 10 cents to give a shit about, no one would be able
to spare a dime?
Who’s left from when the show was at its best? Well, we have
Daryl, Michone, Rick, Maggie, and Carol. I guess you could also add Morgan to
that group. Imagine if Seinfeld killed off Kramer in season 4 and then tried to
keep the fans interested with new, half-assed additions. That’s what The
Walking Dead does regularly. I’ll give them credit for a few additions like
Ezekiel, Neagan, and Jesus (Ok, you can have the mullet guy too, I suppose),
but they’re not Kramer and they’re definitely not Glenn.
This in part stems from the show growing from a wasteland of
very few survivors to a Georgia full of different factions with their own
armies. On top of killing beloved characters in hopes of creating new Kramers, this
flood of different factions dilutes the character development immensely and
makes one not care about any of them. Hell, 30 people could be killed in a
single episode this year and I challenge you to name one of them.
With such poor character development over the last few
years, and the influx of meat (nameless characters) for the grinder, killing
Carl is horrible writing at its core. There’s no replacements like when Shane
died and we had Hershel and Maggie growing in our hearts. Killing Carl is a
cheap, emotional grab. Like killing Glenn and Hershel before.
Or is it?
As fans, we all envision the end of the series happening in
our own various ways, but I think most of us hope for some of our beloved
characters to save the day. Maybe we’d lose one or two of them heroically at
the end for emotional weight, but overall we expect Rick and Daryl to escort
Rick’s baby (no use committing her name to memory at this point) and Carl into
some sort of Utopia full of cured and happy people. Maybe Maggie brings her and
Glenn’s baby along with Carol and Michone in some metaphor for a bright future.
That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?
But that’s not the world the creators have created. And
we’re fools to think differently.
Before I give you my theory on why I think Carl and Glenn’s
deaths had to happen precisely when they happened, I want to add one more
point. People often compare the show to the comic book and look for it to
follow along in structure if not necessarily to a tee. But there’s a major flaw
in that way of thinking. The comic is designed to run forever, but the show has
a finite number of episodes by the nature of being a TV series. Unless it’s the
Simpsons, shows like The Walking Dead will inevitably run its course and be in
danger of getting cancelled. With an end of the series always in mind, killing
our beloved characters throughout the series only makes sense when you consider
that the story isn’t going to have a happy ending. Let’s pretend everyone is
going to die at the end. Have you considered that very real possibility? If
this is the case, you can’t be angry because the show has done a good job of
preparing you for that inevitability. If a depressing, morbid ending is indeed
the endgame, what would be the best way to work toward it? Would it be carrying
all of the main characters to the last season and then having to kill them all
in a short period of time? That might be more than we fans can handle. Or would
you, as the show’s creators, want to get as much mileage out of each of the
main characters’ deaths as you could? As a writer who knows everyone is going
to die, then it makes perfect sense to kill them along the way for maximum
payoff for each death.
This also makes sense when you look at reports of Chandler
Rigg’s (Carl) anger over being killed off after being assured he was part of
the show’s future. I think he even bought a house in Georgia earlier this year
with a future on the show in mind. I believe he did have a future but something
changed for the writers. What could that be? The show has been losing ratings year over year and,
though I don’t know the ratings this year, the mess that the show has become
can’t be good. If the creators have seen the writing on the wall that the show
might have run its course, they might have decided to move up their kill-fest
of our favorite characters. In this case, say "Good-bye Carl. Sorry you bought a
house."
If my theory is correct, this does not bode well for our
other friends, Daryl, Maggie, and Michone. If I’m right, look to lose another
major character in the season finale next spring as well as a steady drop in
main characters next season. We’ll likely lose Ezekiel or Jesus soon as well.
I would expect reports to start circulating in the news in the coming weeks and months hinting at the end of the series. If you were sad to see Carl (a character obviously groomed to lead the group)
die, brace yourself for what’s inevitably still to come.
Because in The Walking Dead, like in life, no one makes it
out alive.
Thoughts?
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