*Spoiler alert: Stop reading if you haven't seen "The Walking Dead" Season 6 premiere*

RIP, Carter, we hardly knew ye. "The Walking Dead" and he's been trying to get on the show for a while. They finally gave him a role in the Season 6 premiere ... then killed him off right in that 90 minute starter. His character, Carter, was an Alexandria resident who questioned Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). Rick ended up putting Carter down after Carter was bitten in the neck by a walker and started making the kind of noise you'd make too if you lost half your face.

Check it out:


It was kind of a surprise to see a big name like Ethan Embry killed off so quickly, especially when it seemed like they had just set Carter up to be an adversary to Rick. After all, he had just formed a little Anti-Rick group with the plan to kill the Ricktator before the Ricktator got the rest of them killed.

Showrunner Scott Gimple talked to TVLine after Episode 1, and said fans were supposed to feel that surprise and loss.

That was [kind of] the point. Hopefully, it was nice to feel potential extinguished. We don't want death to feel just like something to tick off on a box, so, that way when he's killed the audience feels some sort of loss, even if it's just story loss. We [also] want the impact felt of what Rick is doing and what Morgan feels for what Rick did."

Morgan (Lennie James) does not seem like he could so quickly move on from putting down another human being. ("All life is precious, Daryl!") And as it happens, shutting Carter up didn't help much since someone out there has serious road rage and they're blaring a horn to attract walkers to Alexandria. We'll see how that plays out in Episode 2 and beyond.

Ethan Embry himself talked to Entertainment Weekly about how he learned of his character's sad fate:

I knew from the get-go that it was a quick one-and-done. I'm doing 'Grace and Frankie' right now so I can only do a couple episodes anyway, and I had already used up one of my cards doing Sneaky Pete. So I only had a couple of playtimes left, and this one episode — I get to do everything a person would want to do if they got invited on a show. The only thing I'm bummed I didn't get to do is kill a zombie; I wish I could have got one of them. But other than that, I get to go and wrangle a posse against Rick, I get to do a conspiracy against him, I get my face bitten off — it's great!

At least he has a positive attitude about the whole thing. But we do feel that potential was extinguished. Carter was even pulling a Nicholas and admitting to Rick that he was right in his choice to divert the walkers. He did have potential. Oh well! Maybe Ethan Embry can just try for a role in "Fear the Walking Dead" Season 2.

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