The Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs Says “We’ll See” About Carl Grimes Return

Former Walking Dead star Chandler Riggs is "absolutely" open to reprising his Carl Grimes role, saying "we'll see" if the character reappears elsewhere in The Walking Dead Universe after being killed off in the zombie drama's eighth season. Carl was not among the dead characters who returned in the exit episodes for parents Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), who both hallucinated deceased loved ones in their sendoffs from The Walking Dead. When a drugged Michonne relived her past with a disturbing twist in April's "What We Become," revisiting the group's traumatic first encounter with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Carl was present in a brief cameo made possible by the use of archive footage.

Asked if he would reprise his Walking Dead role while appearing on Tommy DiDario's Let's Stay Together, Riggs said, "Absolutely, yeah. It'd be a lot of fun."

He added, "I don't really see it happening in any current medium of the show, but maybe hopefully in something else. I don't know, we'll see."

Riggs previously told TV Guide he wishes to return alongside his TV dad in the Walking Dead feature films, taking place after Rick and Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh) disappear aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter. Returning via flashback "would be amazing," Riggs said in 2019. "It'd be so much fun to get to work with Andy again. That'd be great."

Former Walking Dead showrunner turned chief content officer Scott Gimple recently reaffirmed plans to revisit past characters in short-form projects that would "fill in the blanks," allowing the return of dead characters in standalone zombie stories. Gimple did not identify which former Walking Dead stars will reprise their roles in these mini-episodes said to "take a peek" at the early zombie apocalypse.

In March, Gurira revealed her final episode of The Walking Dead filmed but deleted a "very dark" exchange between Michonne and Carl. The fantasy sequence, which depicts Michonne as a high-ranking member of Negan's Saviors, was recorded with body doubles acting as Rick and Carl.

"I'm happy with the way things went down, and happy that Carl … left behind a legacy," Riggs said on Let's Stay Together. "It wasn't taken lightly, his death. He's still mentioned in the show today, and I'm happy for that, for my character to leave behind that kind of legacy that is still told in the story today. His impact is still relevant, so it's really cool to kind of be a part of that."

The Walking Dead next airs its Season 10 finale, "A Certain Doom," premiering Sunday, October 4 on AMC. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.