The Walking Dead Stars: Henry’s Death Was Worse Than Sophia’s for Carol

Former Walking Dead star Madison Lintz, who played Carol’s (Melissa McBride) only daughter Sophia, believes the recent death of adopted son Henry (Matt Lintz) may have an even bigger impact on the mourning mother than Sophia’s own tragic death in Season 2.

“She’s lost kind of a lot of children. She has a couple of them, not just [Sophia] and Henry. Lizzie and Mika, and Sam, so I feel like this one was definitely a bigger one — the biggest one since Sophia, or even bigger than Sophia,” Madison said at MCM London Comic Con.

“So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. For the record, when I died, she became a badass. So we’ll see what happens.”

Joked Macsen Lintz, who played Henry before a six-year time jump, “You kind of learn to just not hang out with her.”

“I think after each of the kid’s deaths, she kind of broke a little bit more, but also she got stronger,” said Matt Lintz, whose teenaged Henry was abducted and then murdered by Whisperer leader Alpha (Samantha Morton) in the penultimate episode of Season 9.

“But I think after Henry’s, maybe she’ll crack completely. But we’ll see.”

Is Alpha in trouble now that she’s incurred Carol’s wrath? “I would say so, yeah,” Matt said. “I would say so. But we’ll see.”

Younger brother Macsen disagrees: “I don’t know, because Alpha’s got her army of walkers she’s gonna unleash onto the world and kill everyone,” he said. “It’s inevitable.”

When asked on Talking Dead if Carol will retaliate and take out Alpha, McBride said “that would be really fun.”

“But I know how it goes down in the comic book, it’s Negan,” she said of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s formerly incarcerated anti-hero, “and I think that would be really interesting, too.”

Henry’s death was so traumatic it forced Carol and husband Ezekiel (Khary Payton) to split, a relationship that may or may not be mended in Season 10.

“She got to live out the fairytale chapter of her life. When we knew that Alpha would strike against Henry, we really talked about that in real life, it’s very common for couples that lose a child to break up. The grief can be overwhelming,” showrunner Angela Kang previously told EW.

“It can reveal cracks in a relationship that maybe were there all along, or can create new cracks. So we wanted to play the emotional truth of that and the fact that, for Carol, part of that fairytale of being at the Kingdom, it was a package deal. It was Ezekiel. It was Henry. It was the place. It was all the people. And so when all of that falls apart, what she refers to as the thing that is always the thing that she kind of wants to revert to, which is, I just want to run away from it — it becomes a big part of her story going forward.”

The Walking Dead is expected to return to AMC with Season 10 in October.