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The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman Reveals The Secret to a Good Character Death


If there's anything that The Walking Dead has an abundance of besides walkers, it would have to be deaths.

For the premiere season alone, we already saw two of them happen. But the silver lining here is that, even if it makes fans grieve, it's part of the storytelling process for The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman.

In an interview with Comicbook.com, Kirkman revealed just why he feels compelled to write off characters, especially ones that have already started to hold a soft spot in our hearts.

"You know, I don't really have a favorite. I tend to kill those, just because when I find myself real attached to a character, or if I find myself wanting to write them more and more and steering more story toward them, I kind of realize that that means that audience investment in that character is extremely high, and I don't want it to affect the story too much by focusing too much on that character. And that tends to make me want to kill them."

This is, of course, his process for writing the original material in The Walking Dead comics. Kirkman has the slightly awful experience of doing it again for the TV series adaptation.

And as we know from past experience, there are certain differences from the source. The perfect example is Andrea, who should not have died on TV back in season 3, if we're following the comics. More recently, we also saw Abraham steer clear of a certain death by Dwight's dead shot on TV. But he made a different exit, as we saw him take Negan's head-crushing blows like a champ.

As for this, Kirkman says that these re-dos make him think of what could have been in the comic. Carol is a great example, since she has become something of a female Daryl--the badass kind who can blow bases up with a bazooka or take out The Wolves like an assassin.

For the most part, this kind of treatment for stories do succeed. We've seen it in Game of Thrones, where author George R.R. Martin killed off personal favorite Khal Drogo.

It did the story good: unleashing the real monster that is Dany came from losing her sun and stars. Might we be seeing a similar plot in The Walking Dead this season?

The Walking Dead airs every Sundays 9:00 p.m. on AMC.

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