The Walking Dead Fans Are Convinced Chandler Riggs Is Teasing a Carl Grimes Comeback

Former Walking Dead star Chandler Riggs could have his eye on a return to TWD Universe. Riggs played Carl Grimes, son of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and older half-brother to Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming), until Season 8: there Carl committed suicide to prevent succumbing to an incurable walker bite. Riggs’ reaction comes after The Walking Dead chief content officer Scott Gimple reaffirmed plans to reintroduce dead characters in largely anthological event or limited series exploring deceased fan-favorite characters, a direction intended to “fill in some of the blanks” left open-ended by the flagship television show, now midway through its tenth season.

When reacting to Gimple stating TWD Universe plans to re-examine “characters that we’ve lost,” Riggs replied on Twitter with the glancing eyes emoji:

There’s little room to revisit a living Carl — The Walking Dead only jumped 18 months into the future after Carl’s death, later undergoing a six-year time jump in Season 9 with Rick’s disappearance — but Riggs previously expressed hopes he would be involved in the planned Walking Dead movie trilogy centered around the missing Rick.

“I hope so. That would be amazing,” Riggs previously told TV Guide when asked if Carl might appear through flashback or other means, such as hallucination or dream sequence. “It’d be so much fun to get to work with Andy again. That’d be great.”

During an earlier convention appearance in 2019, Riggs said he would be “super down” to return to the world of The Walking Dead despite being killed off in its eighth season.

Gimple has long teased plans for multiple miniseries, specials and other shorter length series building out TWD Universe, including stories that could conceivably bring back fan-favorites like Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz), both killed off in Season 7, or characters like the short-lived Andrea (Laurie Holden), who met a premature end in Season 3 when compared to her comic book counterpart.

“I’m trying to get together a number of different things that we can show at different times during the year, and this focuses on characters we miss and we lost,” Gimple most recently told EW. “It focuses on aspects of that new mythology. It focuses on stories that occur in our universe and have nothing to do with anything. Nothing to do with the shows or the movies, that are just these little zombie tales that happen in our world with our rules and our timeline but are just really great zombie stories, really great stories of the end of the world. I’ve been working on that with a variety of people, and that’s actually proving to be super fun and interesting.”

Asked if these projects could fill in backstories on characters whose histories were left more open-ended, Gimple said that’s “exactly what we’re doing,” adding, “It’s awesome to be able to play with characters that we’ve lost, and it’s awesome to fill in some of the blanks.”

Whether or not such plans include Carl, Riggs’ vague tweet is fueling speculation he’ll be among the lost characters returning to TWD Universe:

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The Walking Dead Season 10 returns with new episodes Feb. 23 on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.