The Walking Dead creator crowns George R.R. Martin master of the one thing he can’t match

Here’s a fun bit from the Annecy International Animation Festival that’s sure to amuse anyone who’s ever shouted at the telly when their favourite got the axe: Robert Kirkman, the bloke behind The Walking Dead, admits that when it comes to killing off main characters, he’s basically an apprentice standing next to a master. And that master? You guessed it – George R. R. Martin, the twisted genius behind Game of Thrones.

When the Grim Reaper Is Outclassed

During a panel chat at Annecy, Kirkman gave full credit where credit’s due, saying quite matter-of-factly:

'He is the master, and I am but the learner. He is way better at killing characters than me.'

If you’ve ever wondered who exactly decides that beloved characters should meet a premature and brutal end, Kirkman paints a fairly vivid picture of himself as 'the lunatic in the writers' room', always pitching another bizarre twist or fresh corpse. Not for the sake of cheap shocks, he insists, but because he genuinely liked keeping readers (and later viewers) on their toes. If you followed the original comics, you’ll know he wasn’t shy about wiping out crowd-pleasers now and then.

The Adaptation Headache

Kirkman pointed out something the die-hards might’ve spotted: the unpredictability he loved in the comics didn’t always carry over to TV. Half the audience already knew what came next. The fix? Mix things up. That meant altering plots and even swapping fates between characters just to keep it all surprising. As Kirkman put it, what started out as a clever trick ended up biting the writers:

• The further they got into the show, the trickier it became to juggle which character was meant to do what.
• Some characters who survived in the comics had already been bumped off on TV, so entire plotlines had to get reassigned to other actors, just to make the whole thing work.
• Kirkman summed it up rather well: 'It becomes tedious and frustrating.'

The Case of Daryl Dixon

One particularly close call involved Daryl Dixon, played by Norman Reedus. Apparently, Kirkman was very keen on killing off Daryl for a while, campaigning hard for his death. Considering Daryl turned into an icon of the series (and, let’s be honest, the very reason some people kept watching), it’s a good thing cooler heads prevailed. Reedus’s crossbow-wielding biker even landed his own spin-off, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and that’s been getting plenty of praise from critics.