The Walking Dead: 7 Reasons Why Carl's Death Was A HUGE Mistake

3. It Invalidates Rick's Arc

The Walking Dead has always been framed around Rick Grimes' fight for survival but, right there with him, is his son Carl. Rick's fought to protect his son's life, and while Judith added to that too, the bond between the father-and-son was one of the most developed and a core part of the show and RIck's raison d'être.

We went through that for eight years of close calls, struggles, drama, and eventually got to a place where there's a chance of making a better world, and then Carl dies. Obviously The Walking Dead tends to be an incredibly nihilistic series, flipping between its twin themes of hope and despair, but killing off Carl at this juncture makes it harder to see what the point was of everything that came before it.