The Walking Dead: 7 Reasons Why Carl's Death Was A HUGE Mistake
6. Another Dragged Out Death
Along with the shock factor, The Walking Dead also has an annoying habit of dragging out deaths - or potential deaths - across either long gaps between airing or multiple episodes.
It happened with the Glenn fakeout, then the actual deaths of Glenn and Abraham (not just the cliffhanger, but the 20-minute stretch of the Season 7 premiere), and, in Season 8, the question of what was happening with Gabriel and Negan.
The same has now happened with Carl, with the reveal he'd been bitten coming in the mid-season finale, but the actual death not happening until a few months later in the mid-season premiere. It's not until this episode we even see how Carl was bitten, and it means that - despite the emotional core of the episode - the death doesn't pack quite the same punch as it would've done being contained to just one episode.