‘The Walking Dead’s Ross Marquand Says a Different Character Nearly Lost an Arm in Season 7

Ross Marquand, whose Aaron had his left arm amputated following a gruesome construction injury early on in The Walking Dead Season Nine, says a different character almost suffered a similar fate in Season Seven.

“Originally, they had been proposing that for another character in Season Seven,” Marquand said at Walker Stalker Con New Jersey Saturday. “And then it didn’t come to fruition for various reasons.”

Marquand previously noted on Talking Dead it was a different character who once nearly had their arm removed, but Marquand declined to specify which character both times.

It could be Carl (Chandler Riggs) who was delimbed, as he nearly lost an arm in The Walking Dead‘s gory Season Seven premiere when Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), having freshly killed Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Glenn (Steven Yeun), nearly forced Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) to sever Carl’s arm in order to break the defiant leader.

Riggs, speaking at a Walker Stalker convention in March 2017, admitted to the audience he expected Negan and Rick to go through with the gruesome deed.

“I had no idea it wasn’t going to happen,” Riggs said. “When I was reading the script, I was like, ‘are they seriously going to cut my arm off?’ I was scared to death.”

Another viable candidate is Rick, who lost his right hand long ago in creator Robert Kirkman’s comic books following an attack by the villainous Governor — a plot point Kirkman wanted to carry over into the television show.

“I wanna cut Rick’s hand off,” Kirkman said during February’s Walker Stalker Cruise 2018.

Lincoln, who has since exited the mothership series and will next reappear in a trilogy of television movies, previously told ComicBook.com he wanted Rick to lose a hand, but “they’ll never let me!”

“I think that, the moment I start getting a little bit of a heat stroke and I start going mad and then start talking about, ‘It’s time. You’re gonna take my hand off!’ Then, you know, the special effects department start to loathe it and just start nodding and just go, ‘No, no, no, no, no. You have no idea how expensive that would be,’” Lincoln said.

Lincoln further recalled the troubles of former co-star Michael Rooker, who played the one-handed Merle Dixon, whose arm became “sweaty and stinky” when enclosed in the knife apparatus that acted as Merle’s replacement limb.

“It depends. It depends,” Lincoln said in 2017. “When it gets to fall, I like the sound of it. But mid-summer, not so much.”

The Walking Dead returns Sunday, February 10 on AMC.