Why The Walking Dead Is Ending

4. The Comic Series Has Ended

While sheer numbers and big business are no doubt a huge reason why AMC are wrapping up the show, there's also the case that, after this year, there's only a finite amount of story left to tell unless The Walking Dead decides to diverge widely from the source material.

Out of nowhere, comic creator Robert Kirkman decided to end The Walking Dead series earlier in 2019. The idea was to make the book's biggest surprise death, well, the book itself, which wrapped up one issue after Rick Grimes exited the story.

Though the show has chopped and changed parts of the comics before (killing off key characters and even introducing new storylines), the general throughline has always followed the source material, and with that now finite, it makes sense that the series' end would follow soon after.

The writers could theoretically extend the TV series or even disregard the ending of the comics, but history would suggest that it will end when it runs out of stories to adapt.