Walking Dead star reacts to tragic mid-season twist
Warning: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS about season 8 episode 8 of The Walking Dead, which airs tonight (December 11) at 9pm on FOX and NOW TV in the UK.
We were warned that we would have a "love/hate relationship" with the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, and boy was that true.
Because in last night's (December 10) episode 'How It's Gotta Be', the post-apocalyptic drama delivered one of its biggest twists yet, forgoing everything comic book fans thought they knew about the story.
Yep, it's time to say goodbye to Carl.
Reacting to the revelation that his on-screen son (Chandler Riggs) had been bitten by a walker and will inevitably die, Andrew Lincoln revealed that he was stunned into silence when he was told of the twist by showrunner Scott Gimple.
"My first reaction was silence. Scott Gimple called me up and said, 'You're going to hate this one'... I tried guessing four times and was nowhere near Chandler Riggs' name," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Related: The 5 best theories for what caused The Walking Dead's zombie outbreak
"Scott had to say that it was Carl. I just didn't speak for a minute. I always thought Carl was going to be the one who led the show forward; that Rick would hand over his boots and revolver when he walked off into the sunset in season 28."
Andrew went on to call Carl's impending death "the biggest" of the series. "This is seismic. As the season progresses, all of us kept saying that this was bigger than Glenn's death," he said.
Despite finding Rick's unexpected loss "incredibly sad" and "difficult", Andrew conceded that its shock factor was necessary for the series: "I never saw it coming, but that's the point."
Although fans will have to wait a while to discover how the survivors cope with the loss of Carl, we do at least have an inkling of just how hard-hitting season 8 is going to be when it returns.
"The beginning [of the mid-season premiere] is the most painful episode I've been involved in," Andrew teased.
We're not sure we can take it, guys.
The Walking Dead returns for the back half of season eight next year. It airs on AMC in the US, and on FOX and NOW TV in the UK.
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