‘The Walking Dead’ season 6, episode 9 reaction: Chandler Riggs on Carl’s eye-opening surprise

Tonight’s winter premiere of “The Walking Dead” was intense and then some, serving quite possibly as one of the biggest episodes that we’ve seen in some time. We had quite a few shockers over the course of the hour in between multiple character deaths (Jessie and Ron, just to name a couple), but we also had a pivotal moment that many people in the comics have been looking forward to: Carl losing an eye.

Honestly, we weren’t sure that this was ever going to happen, but it did! Chandler Riggs explains to The Hollywood Reporter that without his character having the disposal of a full range of vision, there are some different things that he will inevitably end up doing:

“I was talking to Scott about it because physically it was harder losing depth perception and about 70 degrees of vision. You don’t realize how much you rely on both your eyes until you’re having to go hours without being able to use one of them. It’s harder to film, which makes it easy for me to play Carl because it’s such a drastic difference in how I live. It’s easier to make that change.”

Meanwhile, Riggs also chimes in a little bit on how he thinks his character will react to the Alexandria community for the most part banding together in the midst of a large zombie attack:

“He’ll be proud of the community — it’s what the entire group has wanted for so long. The entire second half of last season and the first half of season six was about trying to get these people to realize what it’s like outside the world and they need to fight and learn how to kill walkers and need to know how to survive. And they proved that they can do that in this episode.”

You can see our review of “The Walking Dead” Sunday night over at the link here right now! Also, you can sign up here to score some other TV news on all we cover, sent right to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: AMC.)