‘The Walking Dead’ season 7: Clearing up those Chandler Riggs rumors

Carl -

Is it really confirmed that Chandler Riggs is leaving “The Walking Dead” at the conclusion of the seventh season in order to attend college? We do know that people love to speculate on that sort of thing, but for now there are definitely some stories on the subject that are being blown out of proportion and then some.

Many of these stories, at least at the moment, stem from the notion that Riggs’ initial seven-season contract with the AMC series is up, and that the actor is preparing to go to college at Auburn, as referenced in the tweet below. Some comments (now deleted) from the actor’s father about the end of his son’s contract surfaced recently on Instagram, and have since been deleted.

While it may be easy to read a whole lot into some of this stuff, there are a few things that you really should know before you start officially proclaiming that the end is near for one Carl Grimes.

1. Auburn is not far from Georgia – While it’d be a long commute for a day’s work, it is feasible that he could attend classes and then go off to film the show for a few days before heading back. Auburn seems to be a good choice for him in terms of having a normal college experience.

2. Many actors sign seven-season contracts – The contract ending this year really doesn’t mean anything, since he can always sign a new one.

3. Do you think Riggs would be saying anything about his future if Carl were to die? Think of it this way. This is a show that was so secretive about the events of the season 7 premiere that Michael Cudlitz was doing press and acting like Abraham was going to be sticking around for a while. We have a feeling Riggs would be as silent as a mime if Carl was going somewhere.

We do still understand why such rumors exist, given that A) it’s a slow week in TV news and people want to talk about something and B) Carl’s not in a great place on the show at the moment, given that he made a super-stupid move to try and infiltrate the Saviors’ compound at the moment. It feels almost too obvious that something is going to happen to Carol, though you can also argue that his death would be the one thing that would cause Rick to start to wake up and become full-on angry Rick again.

We’ll have some other news soon regarding “The Walking Dead”; to check out some other stories from our archive, be sure to visit the link here right now! (Photo: AMC.)

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