Robert Kirkman’s “The Walking Dead” is the biggest show on cable television, so you’d think all would be right in the man’s world. But in a recent interview with THR, it turns out Kirkman has one major regret in regards to how the series has played out thus far.
If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have done the CDC episode [at the end of season one],” Kirkman told THR, referring to the finale involving Dr. Jenner (Noah Emmerich) and the destruction of the CDC. As you’ll recall, Jenner tells Rick (Andrew Lincoln) a secret at the end of the episode, a secret revealed one season later to be that everybody in the world – walker and human alike – is already infected.
Kirkman continued:
It possibly gave away too much information and was such a big change very early on in the series…
I feel like there might have been a better way to wrap up the first season… It ended up being a fun episode. I love the character of Dr. Jenner and thought Noah did an amazing job. But there were things in that episode that I think seem very much not of The Walking Dead world.
I’ve been careful in the comic series to not say what’s happening in other parts of the world. It’s something that’s going to be fun to explore in the spinoff series. But the fact that France is mentioned in that episode and other things like that, I probably would have steered away from that stuff if I had to do it all over again.”
Obviously, Kirkman just revealed that the spinoff series will indeed be taking place in a different part of the world altogether.
In the comics (which I haven’t read so I’m just going on THR’s text), the fact that everyone is infected isn’t revealed until well into the series, when “Tyreese’s s daughter, Julie, is killed in what was supposed to be a joint suicide pact with boyfriend Chris. When she reanimates without a zombie bite, Rick and the gang put the pieces together.”
Plenty more drastic changes have gone down to separate the show from the comic, but obviously this is the one that sticks in Kirkman’s craw.