The Walking Dead Creator Kirkman: "No Character Is Too Popular To Die. Suck It, Reedus!"

The Walking Dead

creator Robert Kirkman has, once again, declared that the popularity of Norman Reedus won't save Daryl Dixon if he feels it's time to kill the character on the hit AMC series based on his comic books. While the show often diverges from the comics, most characters die roughly when and how they're "supposed to." The trick? One of the show's most popular characters -- Daryl -- doesn't appear in the comics, making his entire character arc difficult to predict. The fact that he's become so wildly popular, and that Reedus has built up such a rabid base of vocal fans ("If Daryl dies, we riot") has led Kirkman to say in the past that if the character were to die, it would be the fault of the fans.

"I get a lot of hate mail every time I kill anybody in the comic, which always aggravates me becuase it's like, 'It's been a hundred issues! Don't know how this is by now? What are you doing?'" Kirkman told reporters assembeld after AMC's The Walking Dead panel at San Diego Comic Con International over the summer. "But specifically about the Daryl thing – that fan reaction is going to get him killed. I feel like it's a dare. Like, 'Oh, really? You're gonna riot? We'll see…we'll see.' No one is safe." That question was specifically about Reedus. Today on Reddit, though, he poked at the Daryl fans without so much as a name drop. Asked only whether popular characters are less likely to die than unpopular ones, Kirkman answered, "In my opinion, I feel like characters ripen like fruit. So while I wouldn't say the more popular a character is the more likely they are to die, they do have to reach a certain level of popularity before they've 'earned' the death." He added, "No character is too popular to die. (Suck it, Reedus!)"