{Warning: Spoilers from the Walking Dead’s mid-season finale are about to commence.}
Many fans were shocked, annoyed, and dumbfounded when they witnessed Rick Grimes son Carl facing down his doom at the end of the mid-season finale of the Walking Dead this past Sunday, leaving viewers with yet another melodramatic cliffhanger involving Carl, and what appears to be a zombie chomp on his belly.
It seems like Chandler Rigg’s father was one of the most annoyed, as he quickly responded to a question on Twitter with the following statement:
Deleted Facebook post from Chandler Riggs’ dad. Wow… Carl was supposed to be around until the end. #TWD pic.twitter.com/gpwPbhannp
— TWD Fan Page (@FTWDFans) December 11, 2017
While it is clear that William Riggs is upset about his son’s premature departure from the series, the vitriol directed at showrunner Scott Gimple and AMC is what stands out in the statement (which has since been removed from Twitter). Saying that he “…never trusted Gimple or AMC” is certainly not the gracious exit that fans have witnessed from other members of the cast, and it certainly adds more uncertainty to the health of the show moving forward.
Chandler Riggs was more polite about his exit from the series, but it is also clear that it was not his choice. Riggs told The Hollywood Reporter that “Leaving Walking Dead wasn’t my decision. It was all story-related. It made sense story-wise for it to happen for Rick and Michonne and all the other characters.”
One of the possible reasons for his exit was also explained by Riggs, saying that “In the comics, Scott was trying to figure out why there was a hole between Rick slitting Negan’s throat at the end of the “All-Out War” arc and then there’s the time jump and Negan is alive and in prison and Rick didn’t kill Negan. Scott was trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between Rick not wanting to kill Negan and Rick also really wanting to kill Negan, which he does right now [in the show’s story]. Scott’s way to get around that was to make Carl this really humanitarian figure and person who could see the good in people and see that people can change and not everyone out there is bad.”
The reason behind Carl’s premature exit hasn’t sat well with fans, most prominently, Forbe’s Paul Tassi. Tassi vented about the decision, explaining that “It’s hard to overstate just how big a deal Carl’s death is for The Walking Dead. It’s the most significant departure from the comics since Andrea was killed off years early, and even more so because Carl is still alive in the comics and had so, so much more to do there. I think it’s a mistake, especially if this was not the actor wanting to leave, and was instead a “creative” decision that ruins a nearly decade-long character arc that was arguably the most important of the series. And for what? To fix a minor comic issue? A “shocking” midseason finale? Please.”
If this move by Gimple was done to boost viewership, in what has been an already disastrous season, it didn’t help. Nielsen’s early ratings numbers for”How Its Gotta Be” have crowned it the show’s lowest-rated fall finale to date in the 18-49 demographic. In addition, the mid-season finale was only up 2% from the previous episode.
Is this the final straw for Walking Dead fans? Stay tuned to Horror News Network for more on the controversial moves and decisions made by the AMC brain trust.
