Is Chandler Riggs leaving The Walking Dead after midseason finale?
For weeks, there have been many rumors floating around about the status of Riggs on the show. He is one of the remaining original cast members and a character who’s been essential to almost the entire journey to date. He’s been a grounding force for Rick, though Carl at the same time has developed his own voice and his own ability to fight the walkers and those around him. We’ve watched him grow from a child to a young man over the years – there’s no one else quite like him.
The reason for these rumors seem to be in part because of Chandler’s own busy schedule these days. He recently cut his hair into a mullet (a.k.a. the Eugene Special) in order to do a movie, he’s dabbling in music (he just released his first song) and he’s also expressed an interest in getting a college education. While it’s feasible he can do all of these things and remain as Carl on the show, there is no confirmation for certain that he is staying. Granted, there’s no confirmation for any cast member on The Walking Dead to make it out of the midseason finale alive, but there is clearly more speculation around his future than many others.
Killing off Carl would be one of the gutsiest, riskiest moves that The Walking Dead could do given that it would make the television show a different animal than the comics in just about every conceivable way. In the source material Carl is meant to be the one who eventually inherits Rick’s job as leader, and he’ll probably become one of the best ones out there. Remember for a minute here that Carl effectively grew up in the Apocalypse and may not remember as well what his life was beforehand. He’s an interesting person to lead the next generation trying to survive in this world. If the show kills him off, they suddenly make the future a little more rudderless unless someone else steps up or the show plays the long game with Judith — though we’d probably need another fifteen or so seasons, even with a time jump, to get to the point where an adult Judith could actually be in charge of everyone.
Judith is another candidate for someone who could die in the midseason finale beyond Carl, and there are some other interesting possibilities out there. Dwight could sacrifice himself for betraying the Saviors, Eugene could pay the price for caring about himself more so than anyone else, and we already know that Father Gabriel is sick. It seems too soon to see Negan fall, but who knows? Maybe cutting out that character now would be the show’s way of bringing forward a totally new story.
Also, at some point Lennie James (Morgan) is leaving to do Fear the Walking Dead, though we think the intention isn’t for him to be gone from the main show forever. Maybe production will just write him out for a season or so.
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