In 2012, in the early Season 3 episode of The Walking Dead, “The Killer Within,” a crowd of walkers are lured into the prison, and chaos erupts. T-Dog is bitten by an invading walker, and while Carol initially tries to help him deal with the bite, T-Dog eventually sacrifices himself to save Carol’s life in the melee. Later in the episode, Lori dies when her natural childbirth goes badly, and she has to be cut open to save her baby.
That’s the episode we all saw air on AMC. But that’s not how the episode was originally envisioned. Killing off T-Dog was a last-minute decision. It was Carol who was supposed to die, along with Lori, in that episode, and the writers only switched it up after Melissa McBride lobbied them heavily to spare her character.
That was the single best decision anyone has ever made on The Walking Dead, and it’s not just because of what Carol has contributed to the series since Season 3. It’s what they spared that character from in the comics storyline.
If the series had chosen to use Carol’s comics storyline, not only would she have died in the prison, but she would’ve developed a relationship with Tyreese, which would’ve fallen apart under a cloud of jealousy after Tyreese hooked up with Michonne. Afterwards, Carol would’ve not only attempted to sleep with Rick, she would’ve made a play to get Rick and Lori to welcome her into a three-way sexual relationship.
It was Rick and Lori’s rejection of an open relationship that essentially drove Carol to kill herself, allowing a zombie to bite her. She would’ve died in Tyreese’s arms, and Andrea would’ve killed her zombified character.
Given what we know about Carol now, how terrible would that have been?
