The Walking Dead’s former star Chandler Riggs has shared his thoughts about the announcement that Walking Dead will end with season 11. Riggs posted a statement on Twitter, while retweeting The Walking Dead‘s official announcement that the final season is coming in 2021: “truly the end of a legendary era in television. i was the biggest fan of the show while i was on it, and will continue to watch until the very end & am so excited to see how it closes.” Needless to say, the tweet quickly went viral with Walking Dead fans, with the cop response being, “it died with u lets be honest”.
truly the end of a legendary era in television. i was the biggest fan of the show while i was on it, and will continue to watch until the very end & am so excited to see how it closes. https://t.co/ojO0isHLWZ
— chandler riggs (@chandlerriggs) September 10, 2020
Chandler Riggs played Rick Grimes “son” Carl in The Walking Dead seasons 1 – 8. It was the formative event of Riggs’ life; he started the role at age 10, and was an adult by the time he left the show in 2018. The controversy over his departure never faded – and with fair reason.
In The Walking Dead comics, Carl is in many ways the main focus of the story, and in fact is the inheritor of it, when his father Rick dies near the end of the series, leading to an epilogue that follows Carl decades in the future, where he has married Sophia and has a daughter named Andrea, in a world that is rebuilding from the zombie apocalypse. When the TV show killed off Carl, it became too much of a drastic departure from the source material for some fans to support.
It didn’t help that The Walking Dead quickly followed Chandler Riggs’ season 8 departure with the season 9 exit of show star Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes). With both of the remaining members of the Grimes family out of the show by midseason 9, The Walking Dead TV series effectively became something never imagined in the comics.
The fandom was only further split when The Walking Dead proceeded forward without its main characters, and the ratings hit was considerable. Still, it should be noted that the show has managed to move forward in some surprisingly creative ways. The new ensemble focus has helped ratchet up tension and surprise when it comes to deaths and such, while the acting, writing and directing has all been praised for their respective improvements.
In short: Chandler Riggs is right to still support the cast and the show and what’s been accomplished even after his time. Mr. Riggs continues to be a true class act, on his way to do more great things. We wish him well.
The Walking Dead returns to end its Whisperer War arc on October 4th. 10 more episodes of Season 10 will be produced beginning in October to air in early 2021. Season 11 will go into production in early 2021. Fear the Walking Dead will begin airing its sixth season on October 11. The Walking Dead: World Beyond will follow The Walking Dead Season 10 finale on October and new episodes of Fear the Walking Dead with its first season. A TWD movie starring Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes is still in development at Universal and Skybound.