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The Walking Dead finale wrapped up 11 years of drama and stories that captured pop culture by storm, with more on the way with spin-offs and other shows already on the air like Fear The Walking Dead and Tales of The Walking Dead.
While the finale sealed the fate of several characters, including Khary Payton’s Ezekiel becoming the new leader of the Commonwealth, but that wasn’t always the plan. Showrunner Angela Kang and finale director Greg Nicotero spoke to Entertainment Weekly and explained there were actually alternative routes for some characters.
When bringing up the idea of who would run the Commonwealth, it went through a handful of ideas before Ezekiel was chosen. “We talked about maybe Mercer becomes that person. We talked about maybe Carol becomes that person, maybe Maggie becomes that person,” Kang said. “And at the end of the day, we settled on Ezekiel because it felt like Ezekiel is inherently a leader, and he has survived so much. And he is a very, very community-focused type of a leader.”
Another big change from the finale was that Carol was originally going to ride off with Daryl at the end, but it had to be reconstructed when actress Melissa McBride announced she wasn’t joining Norman Reedus in his spin-off this past April.
“We’d always planned that the two of them were going to ride off together. In the original version, they would’ve gone on the bike and pointed west and then would’ve gotten sidetracked,” Kang continued. “So it becomes, he rides off, and she’s there to support him because there’s no anger or anything between them about it. It’s just he’s going to go off on a mission, and she has a different mission right now.”
According to Kang, Reedus and McBride’s collective wish was to just keep it really simple and emotional. So their final goodbye was rewritten in a way to reflect that.
Daryl’s spin-off series will be set with Reedus’ titular Dixon finding himself transported across the Atlantic to France and a whole new world of terror awaiting him and his crew.
