Farewell To The Most Annoying Piece Of Shit On ‘The Walking Dead’
It's finally happened!
**Spoilers for The Walking Dead ahoy**
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The Walking Dead has killed off another big character! This time it’s the ‘Toady Rebecchi’ of the zombie apocalypse, Carl Grimes, who we watched grow up from annoying child in a hat to an insufferable cyclopic teenager.
You know, this guy:
People who still watch The Walking Dead must feel a lot of kinship with the characters of the show — they’re both a desperate, beleaguered bunch of survivors, a tiny remnant of a stubborn and bedraggled society, who spend their lives watching more of their number disappear. And much like Rick Grimes and his wacky crew of post-apocalyptic survivors, we have to wonder exactly why Walking Dead fans still bother?
The latest news for those brave, emotionally-dead watchers of The Walking Dead is that Carl, probably the most important (still surviving) cast member of the show apart from his papa Rick, has been killed.
This was not massively surprising, as we knew he’d been chomped on by a zombo from last year’s baffling mid-season finale, and death almost inevitably follows such things.
Waiting for Carl to die on the walking dead #TheWalkingDeadUK #TheWalkingDead pic.twitter.com/y9UeA3ifqC
— Bret Payton (@bretpayton) February 26, 2018
But the most recent episode of season eight walks us through the grim and lengthy specifics of how he actually exits from this mortal plane, including his emotional and wordy farewells to his friends and family. Must see television!
Carl’s death places him in the canon of almost eight seasons worth of shock-death storylines that The Walking Dead has bludgeoned us with, an in-memoriam so lengthy and forgettable that it basically invalidates any character’s value to the show. Notable deaths would include Carl’s mum, Lori, who our boy shot himself while she was in labour, or Hershel who got decapitated with a sword by a mayor!
After that, things start to get into a bit of a blur. Remember Andrea? Remember Shane? Seems like a million years ago. But the show seemed to truly bludgeon the shark to death with the egregiously gruesome death of show favourite Glenn at the beginning of season seven.
Smashing Glenn’s melon so ruthlessly seemed to point The Walking Dead firmly down the path of deaths-for-ratings replacing meaningful plot development.
No character has really been misused so badly as Carl. It’s a shame, because he’s a great actor who’s had some brilliant moments. Who can forget him sitting blissfully on a roof, eating a huge can of pudding while walkers scratch at the windows behind him?
But unfortunately, more often than not, he’s been the catalyst for some of the show’s worst decisions, precisely because he’s stupidly important to the show. In the earlier seasons, he was the vulnerable, weak child that was the impetus for the characters on the show to protect, such as when he was accidentally shot by some guy, making finding medical help for him the narrative goal of that season.
In later seasons, he was billed as the reason for everyone to keep trying, the kid who would grow up and, in Lori’s words, “beat this world.” This level of scrutiny meant that every decision of his — his mistakes such as accidentally causing Dale’s death, his rather understandable moments of depression, confusion — became insufferably annoying. You could almost tell how well the show was going based on whether or not Carl’s plotline and reactions made any sense — and unfortunately, more often that not, his reactions were baffling.
The return of The Walking Dead is a wonderful reminder of what character development is not.
— Ryan "Holly" Hollinger (@ryanhollinger) February 26, 2018
The thing that consistently impresses me about The Walking Dead is that just when I think a show can’t get any slower, it doubles down on the slow and laughs in my face. Slowly. ?♀️
— Alex Pardee (@alexpardee) February 26, 2018
Carl was the weathervane of just how batshit The Walking Dead’s plot was. With his death, we lose what was left of the The Walking Dead’s remaining purpose. As Rick says during Carl’s death:
“It was all for you. Right from the start. Back in Atlanta. The farm. Everything I did, it was for you …”
Seems difficult for the show to come back from this, in anything less than the shambling, unthinking corpse of its former self.
I think The Walking Dead's later seasons are built on a total misunderstanding of what made the show appealing in its early season. People didn't watch because they wanted to see characters die – they watched because they wanted to see characters survive, against all the odds.
— Hannah Shaw-Williams (@HSW3K) February 26, 2018
So RIP Carl, you insufferable piece of shit.