The Walking Dead boss reveals how Carol was almost killed off
AMCCarol Peletier may be one of the most beloved characters in The Walking Dead universe, but it has now been revealed that she was originally going to be killed off during Season 3.
It’s not easy being a Walking Dead fan. If you get attached to a character, chances are they’ll be killed off before too long – or at least put through a ton of misery. As a result, there aren’t many of the OG cast left, but one person who’s proven herself to be a survivor is Carol.
When she first appeared on the show back in Season 1, Carol was portrayed as timid and was experiencing abuse at the hands of her husband Ed. But over the show’s 10 season run, she’s shown incredible growth and become one of the strongest characters on the show.
AMCIt turns out, though, that this character development wasn’t always going to be given time to happen. The Walking Dead showrunner Scott Gimple spoke in a new interview with Looper about how plans to kill off Carol “got pretty far down the line” before opposition from himself and the cast put a stop to them.
Carol was originally going to be killed off in Season 3
“There was some investigation going on about killing Carol,” Gimple said. “I was pretty hardcore against that. Because I saw her journey of going from somebody under her ex-husband’s thumb to being a warrior.
“It just looked like the most amazing journey for our character to have, and having worked with Melissa McBride up to that point, it was like, ‘Oh, well, she could do that. She can do anything’.”
During Season 3, Carol was presumed dead during a walker attack on the prison, but by the next episode viewers found out she had actually survived. This set the precedent for many more ‘fake-outs’ in the show’s future, but Gimple says this was a surprising thing to do at the time.
AMC“Man, I would love to look up some of the old emails or something like that because it was like, what if people thought she was dead, but she lived? At that point, that was a surprise as well, people were dying and dying. It was what the show was getting a lot of noise for at that point,” he continued.
“And it seemed even early on switching that up, but really it was more about seeing that character go through that journey because she had started out as so passive and a victim. And to see her become one of the strongest people in the story seemed exciting to me as a writer.”
Fortunately, Carol’s future looks safe for now. She’ll appear in a long-awaited Daryl and Carol spin-off, which is expected to air once the main The Walking Dead series comes to an end following its 11th season.