Despite featuring a legion of the undead,The Walking Deadwas always about its human characters and how they reacted to the end of the world - and yet its original ending would have thrown away all the growth and progress that Rick Grimes' group achieved. Thankfully, fans were spared that dark, downer ending, all because ofwhenwriter and co-creator Robert Kirkman said goodbye to his blockbuster franchise.
InThe Walking Dead Deluxe #84, Kirkman outlined the"original scrapped ending"that would have capped off the adventures of Rick, Carl, Michonne, Negan and Andrea.Describing his original idea as"bleak, sad, possibly terrible,“Kirkman originally considered the ending set in stone, even telling it toThe Walking Dead’s executive producer Greg Nicotero and Rick Grimes actor Andrew Lincoln ahead of the show so they knew the final direction the franchise would take.
According to Kirkman,The Walking Deadwas slated to end with a mislead, suggestingRick had led humanityto re-establish a working society, only to then reveal the zombies had overrun it, finally wiping out the living. It’s a dark ending that would have defined the franchise, and yet due to its success and longevity,Walking Deadwon Kirkman round to a different conclusion.
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Kirkman Intended the Zombies to Win
Thankfully, Delaying the Ending Changed His Mind
In his creator notes toWalking Dead Deluxe #84- from Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Dave McCaig - Kirkman lays out the intended ending.
So, the basic gist is that this massive zombie attack would have happened in Alexandria, Carl wouldn’t have been shot, but everyone would have come together, as they did in this issue, and overcame the zombies. Rick’s hopeful speech to Carl at the end of this issue would have instead been a rousing speech about hope for the future, and how they were going to put down roots in Alexandria and rebuild civilization there, etc. As the speech winded down, we end on a cool shot of Rick standing up in front of the crowd, then you’d turn the page and Rick would be in the same pose, but now he’s a statue commemorating that speech. An indeterminate amount of time would have passed but the statue would’ve looked old and worn, and we’d start zooming away from the statue, as we got further and further away, we’d see that Alexandria was in ruins, long abandoned and the final image as we cut away, ending the series, was a zombie casually walking by.
While the imagery still leaves the possibility that humans survivesomewhere, it’s made clear that despite Rick’s efforts, his survivors fell to the undead scourge. Indeed, because Rick Grimes' group represented a more just world springing up out of disaster, this ending left no room for any truly good outcome - either the zombies have wiped out humanity or a leader like the Governor, Negan or Alpha has been more successful elsewhere.Kirkman goes on to explainthe intended meaning of this final scene, stating:
The idea was that Alexandria was successful enough for Rick to live out his life there and have a statue erected in his honor, but ultimately… the city fell and the scourge of the zombie apocalypse just… continued on. So, we’d leave readers with the idea that no matter what people did… the zombies win. I know, right?
Thankfully for fans who had followed Rick’s group for 193 issues over 16 years,Kirkman repeatedly put off this ending, reasoning that it was something he could do at any point in the story.Because it involved a jump forward in time and a wordless scene,Walking Dead’s original ending had no expiration date - it didn’t even require any specific characters to still be alive aside from Rick himself. This meant that as the series' readership continued to swell and Kirkman kept having new ideas for what could come next, the ending was pushed back, and back, and back, until the story reached a point where Kirkman no longer found his intended ending satisfying. He explains:
I didn’t want to end the series; I was having too much fun. Please believe me when I say writing this series was a huge source of joy in my life. … For a while, I just kept pushing this ending back. A speech that transitions to a statue of Rick? Eh… I could do that any time. But over time I, rightfully, realized it was just not a satisfying ending. Not after spending so much time with the characters, so I abandoned it altogether.
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What’s cool about the process Kirkman describes is thatWalking Deadescaped its downer endingfor the same reason that ending wouldn’t have worked - readers had put too much time into these characters and their world for such a glib sign-off, and as the series continued to inspire its co-creator, he ended up in the same position. For fans of pop culture, it’s really cool to know thatWalking Deadessentially saved itself by being too good to end- and the intended endingwouldhave hurt the story in a major way.
The Comic Goes Out on a Complex, Satisfying Note
A lot of horror, and especially zombie horror, ends on a downer note, having the undead overrun the living. Indeed,Kirkman has cited George A. Romeroas an inspiration several times - it’s part of the reasonThe Walking Deadwas published in black and white - and movie endings don’t get much bleaker than that ofNight of the Living Dead. However, that movie’s runtime is just over an hour and a half. In contrast,Walking Deadfans followed Rick’s group for over a decade, covering years of comic events. Characters live, die, have children, and change the political and social structure of what’s left of humanity. Major villains are redeemed, heroes lose themselves and whole communities collapse.
The other reason thatThe Walking Deadwaspublished in black and whitewas to get away with more gore and violence, ‘toning down’ extreme scenes without pulling any punches in terms of actual content.
In that context,killing everyone off and bringing all their efforts to nothing wouldn’t just be dark, it would feel like the reader had wasted their timecaring about all the twists and turns that ultimately came to the same ruined world that could have been assumed from the first issue. Instead,The Walking Dead #193serves up a complex, compelling vision of this world’s future. Jumping ahead 25 yearsafter Rick Grimes' murder, fans get to see what has become of both humanity and the comic’s many surviving characters.
Walking Dead’s ending sets up so many ideas, Kirkman has hinted that the series might one day recommence from the exact moment it leaves off.
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Kirkman Ensured the Comic Will Be Remembered as a Classic - Something the Original Ending Wouldn’t Have Achieved
By depicting a criminal trial where an adultCarl Grimes has killed a zombiewhich was someone else’s ‘property,‘The Walking Dead #193manages to check in on essentially every living character, showcasing the romances, conflicts and further lives ofeveryonethe reader could possibly care about. Even characters whose stories aren’t strictly over - like Negan, living in isolation after being won over to Rick Grimes’ vision of humanity - are given a satisfying sendoff.
That’s not to say the ending is schmaltzy - Carl’s worries that the new generation of humans don’t fear the undead enough to stay safe are clearly justified, and while he’s cleared of criminal charges, it’s clear his life will go on with further conflicts on the horizon, including two major human settlements finally being joined by a railway. To some readers,Michonne clearing Carl of a crimebecause of their experiences together suggests that the new, ‘better’ human society is recreating the corruption of the old.
Mixing the good with the bad and checking in on its surviving characters,Walking Dead’s ending is the definition of satisfying, implying that this world and its characters have plenty more adventures in them, and that their eventual fate is still in their combined hands. Indeed, Kirkman leaves his world in such good shape that he recently speculated that when the newWalking Dead Deluxecolor reprinting reaches issue 193 -it may simply continue, telling more of Carl’s story.
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‘Rick Grimes Dying in the First Arc’-Level Different
Thanks to time and Robert Kirkman’s love for writingThe Walking Dead, the franchise ultimately flipped its ending.The Walking Deadwent from a bleak ending where the zombies win to the hopeful rebuilding of society, albeit with plenty of flaws. However, any hardcore fan of the franchise will know this is perfect for a story that changed its intentions many times over.
Kirkman originally plannedThe Walking Deadto be a short miniseries that would be the first part of a trilogy.Each installment would see the same world beset by a different threat, with different versions of the same characters appearing in each. This is as distant as possible from"the zombie movie that never ends"thatThe Walking Deadbecame. However, even when the series became an indefinite project, there were still plenty of changes ahead. As he shared inThe Walking Dead Deluxe #6,Kirkman originally planned for Shane to kill Rickin their lethal face-off, with Carl becoming the story’s main character.
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Other majorchanges include Maggie killing Negan- something that was changed at the behest of artist Charlie Adlard, who wanted to truly explore the idea of redemptive justice, rather than falling back on the pop culture staple of preaching forgiveness but depicting ‘an eye for an eye.’ Various characters died earlier or later than planned, and Kirkman actually set up a mystery of why some zombies are weaker than others that was meant to lead into Eugene performing experiments on the undead.
On almost every level and for every major character,Walking Deadwas almost a totally different story, making it something of a miracle that fans ended up with the version they did.The Walking Deadis a major character study, asking hard, dark questions about the worth of human connections in a world where every decision could be the difference between life and death. Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard and Tony Moore crafted one of the best comics ever created in the sprawling saga ofThe Walking Dead- but if Kirkman hadn’t kept putting off his intended ending, comic fans might discuss the story in a very different way - as an almost-great tale that sabotaged itself with an unsatisfying ending.
