Robert Kirkman Reveals His Original Plan For The Walking Dead’s End

In the letter hacks section of The Walking Dead’s final issue, Robert Kirkman reveals his original plan would have ended the comic sooner. Kirkman, who ended the comic series without warning at this week’s issue #193, revealed that the original plan would have ended the series following the No Way Out storyline.

Kirkman wrote (per IGN):

“The big storyline NO WAY OUT ended with Rick proclaiming that Alexandria was a place worth fighting for, that they could no longer keep moving from place to place… they had to take a stand, lay down roots and start building from there. Their nomad days were behind them.

“Well, for years… that had been planned to be… the end. Rick would make his proclamation, and the speech would end with a big close-up on Rick’s face, you’d turn the page, and Rick’s face would be the same, only it was a statue… and you’d zoom out and see the full statue with some vines growing on the bottom of it… cracks forming… and you’d realize that it was quite OLD.

“We’d keep zooming out until we saw that the statue was in Alexandria, the same place where he gave the speech, but it was different. It was old and rundown, broken windows and missing doors. We would keep zooming out until a zombie walked by, then another… and we’d see that Rick had brought them to Alexandria, given this grand speech about rebuilding civilization and SUCCEEDED to the point that they built a statue to honor him… but in the end, the dead won, society crumbled again, this time seemingly for good… and that was it.”