How Carol Died In The Walking Dead Comic (& Why She Survived ...

The Walking Dead’s Carol (Melissa McBride) has greatly outlived her comic counterpart, who died much earlier in the source material. Like many characters on the AMC series, Carol’s journey is quite different from what Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman came up with for her in the comics. If the TV adaptation stuck to the comics, Carol would be a near-forgotten character by now.

In the beginning, though, Carol’s story did mirror the comics. When Rick (Andrew Lincoln) joined the Atlanta group, Carol was a housewife trapped in an abusive marriage and a far cry from the woman who has no qualms about doing whatever it takes to protect her people. Season 1’s Carol was somewhat in line with the comic book version, who was trying to take care of Sophie while also coping with her personal hardships. She was a major character during the early chapters of the story, which included their stay at Hershel Greene’s farm and at least part of the prison arc. One of the biggest differences between the show and the comics was that in the latter, Carol engaged in a short-lived romance with Tyreese.

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The Walking Dead comic killed off Carol sometime after her breakup with Tyreese, who had cheated on her with Michonne. Carol's relationship woes added to her mental and emotional anguish to a point where she began to suffer delusions. Carol’s unfortunate bouts of mental instability culminated in feeling so alone that she allowed herself to get bitten by a zombie, which was basically death by suicide. While the zombie was biting her, she told it, “Oh, good... You do like me,” and treated it like her only friend. Upon reanimation, Carol was put down by Andrea. The Walking Dead show never went in this direction, largely because it took an entirely different approach to Carol's character development.

According to a 2016 SFX interview with executive producer Greg Nicotero, at one point, there were discussions about Carol dying in the season 3 episode where the zombies attacked the prison, but it was eventually agreed that T-Dog (IronE Singleton) should die instead. According to Insider, this was based on an argument made by Scott M. Gimple that it would be better to show “a person who came from abuse become the hero, and not in an easy way." Instead of using Carol’s personal tragedies - such as her husband’s abuse and Sophie’s death - to send her into a downward spiral, The Walking Dead made them obstacles for Carol to overcome. Ultimately, they made her a stronger person.

By following this course, it was discovered there were so many stories that could be told with Carol, and though the show is in the final stretch with The Walking Dead season 11, the series is still finding meaningful things to do with her character. Speaking at NYCC in 2015 (via Vulture) Kirkman even indicated that with everything Carol has endured, she’s one character the show may never kill off. That’s proving to be true, considering Carol is set to appear alongside Daryl (Norman Reedus) in a spinoff. Carol outliving the main show speaks to just how much The Walking Dead universe has benefited from her story being so heavily altered in the early seasons.

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