Chandler Riggs Leaves Carl Grimes Out of Undead Walking Spinoffs

undead walking now has a hard ceiling on one of its earliest legacy characters: Carl Grimes will never appear in the franchise’s spinoffs because he died in the eighth season. That leaves the newer offshoots leaning on returning faces instead of the character once positioned as the future of the series.

Carl was once given heavy focus in the early-mid seasons, and the story even pointed him toward the role Rick Grimes filled at the center of the franchise. His death by putting himself in harm’s way to save Siddiq ended that path, and the decision reportedly caught Chandler Riggs off-guard.

Rick Grimes And The Spinoff Era

AMC kept the franchise moving after the original series ended, and the spinoffs have leaned on familiar names rather than rebuilding from zero. Fear The Walking Dead launched in 2015, while Daryl Dixon put Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride back in the frame, Dead City relied on Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and The Ones Who Live brought back Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira’s Michonne.

That roster leaves Carl in a different category from the characters still available to the franchise. The series can keep mining its survivor pool, but the son of Rick Grimes is no longer part of that cast list, and the spinoffs have already shown they are willing to use returning originals when the story allows it.

Season Eight Closed That Door

Carl’s death in the eighth season is the key fact that shuts down any future spinoff appearance. He was once considered the future of The Walking Dead, and the show’s own long-running habit of carrying characters forward makes his absence more noticeable than a standard character exit.

For viewers following the franchise’s offshoots, the practical takeaway is simple: the spinoffs can still pull from the original series, but Carl Grimes is not part of that pool. The next stories will have to work around that loss, while the already-announced lineup continues to mine the franchise’s surviving core instead of reviving a character whose arc ended years ago.