Khary Payton Wanted Ezekiel to Die “Like a Badass” on The Walking Dead

When The Walking Dead diagnosed King Ezekiel with cancer, actor Khary Payton had just one decree: that Ezekiel die “like a badass.” After being spared the king’s comic book fate — Ezekiel is among the pike victims beheaded by Whisperer Alpha — Payton’s Ezekiel lived long enough to receive treatment for the thyroid cancer he once considered to be terminal. Not only did he survive the television show’s Whisperer War, but Ezekiel also made it out of The Walking Dead series finale alive: the former Kingdom monarch was elected Commonwealth Governor Ezekiel Sutton. 

“When Ezekiel had cancer, I told the writers, ‘Listen, I don’t mind if Ezekiel dies. I’m totally fine with Ezekiel dying,’” Payton recalled at Pennsylvania’s Steel City Con over the weekend. “I was expecting to [die] a long time ago, so I’m cool with that.” 

Payton wanted the cancer-stricken Ezekiel to “go out like a badass,” he explained, not “lying on a bed somewhere.” As one of the more optimistic and hopeful characters, Payton remarked Ezekiel is “too much of a light in a dark place to go out quietly, so he better go out hard. But then I didn’t go out at all.”

Payton’s co-star Ross Marquand, who played Aaron of Alexandria, suggested in a recent interview that there were fewer deaths than expected in the series finale so the survivors could return in spin-offs. Payton has expressed interest in an Ezekiel prequel, telling Insider that he was “not satisfied at all” with his character’s journey on The Walking Dead.  

“I wish that — there are so many places and situations that I would’ve loved to explore. But that’s one of the things that happens when you have a show that has this many dynamic and interesting characters. 48 minutes or, sometimes, over an hour-long episode just isn’t enough,” Payton explained. “These characters are beautifully constructed. I think the strength of the show is that these characters are nuanced, interesting, and there’s so many of them that you just can’t get it all in. I am very sorry to say goodbye to Ezekiel and I cross my fingers and hope that maybe sometime down the road, we could tell the story of how Ezekiel came to be a king or something.”

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