Five Major Ways 'The Walking Dead' Changed For TV

Note: This article contains several significant spoilers from seasons one to four of AMC’s The Walking Dead, as well as the comic book issues that correspond to the rough timeframe covered in the show to date. If you haven’t started the TV series, or you’re yet to read the books, be advised – this will ruin everything.

If you’d told me five years ago that AMC’s little zombie-apocalypse survival horror series, The Walking Dead, would not just still be running strong in 2014 but would have transcended to the lofty heights of outright pop-cultural idolatry, I… actually, I probably wouldn’t have been all that surprised.

At the time of the show’s premiere in October of 2010, I was already several volumes deep into my trade-paperback collection of its literary inspiration (I’ll take that cookie now, thanks), and had been closely following the development of the series for some time, because TV is my only real friend and I like to make the effort to show an interest in what’s happening in its life.

So, when the show finally started airing, I sat down, smug in the knowledge that I would know exactly where this ride was going because I had read the books and that made me better than everyone else, somehow, and watched. And watched. And kept watching, because although, yes, a lot of plot points and characters and even specific shots have been lifted straight from the comics, the writers of The Walking Dead, the show, have also done much to keep long-time book-readers guessing…

i’ve got this recurring shane in my side

The first immediately obvious major difference between The Walking Dead show and its comic counterpart, especially in the first (albeit six-part) season, is the pacing. In the show, it takes the better part of the first episode for police-officer protagonist Rick Grimes to wake up in hospital following a botched shootout with a suspect and find that he has regained consciousness in a world where the dead are just up and shuffling about the streets.

In the comics, that happens on the second page.

It’s a theme we see throughout season one – in fact, most of its journey through the city doesn’t happen in the books, including the encounter with the Vatos and the entire ordeal at the CDC, but Shane’s presence there and beyond is kind of the big one.

Robert Kirkman’s books spend no time really building up the sense of camaraderie and friendship between Rick and his partner/BFF Shane Walsh before Rick gets shot, as happens in the show – it’s there, but it’s not as emotionally central to the story’s progression. Avid watchers of the series will remember Shane as a pretty freaking important character throughout the first and second seasons, when he irredeemably slides from being a back-up protagonist to a central antagonist for Rick, tying in themes of envy and betrayal and unresolved anger and adulterous wife-boning and all the sorts of things that make for good TV. It takes two full seasons for Rick to feel the need to take Shane down, after the latter’s madness-fuelled jealousy reaches unquestionably dangerous levels.

In the books, Carl shoots him straight through the damn neck in issue #6 — well before Rick’s group ever even reaches Hershel’s farm, where TV Shane meets his demise — and all that tension and build-up is dealt with in the space of a few panels.

death, don’t take me now

Shane isn’t the only character whose death has either been delayed or brought forward for TV. To the point in time the show has covered so far (not including TV-only characters), we’ve seen Carol outlive her comics counterpart (suicide by zombie — comics Carol was kind of a mess) but her daughter, Sophia, exit way earlier than hers (she's still alive in the books, in fact).

RV owner and resident moral compass Dale lasted significantly longer in the books than he did in the show, and went out in a way more badass manner: after being bitten during an attack, he leaves the group to die alone, and ends up being kidnapped by a group of cannibals. They knock him out; upon regaining consciousness, he finds they’re eating his leg, before breaking into death-howl laughter, repeating over and over, “Tainted meat!” until the failed masterchefs rage-beat him and he dies of his injuries soon after. None of this second-rate “oh, whoopsie-daisy, I didn’t hear a groaning, slow-moving zombie coming at me in a completely empty and silent field at night and now I’m dead” bullshit that TV Dale got saddled with.

Andrea, another major player throughout the first four seasons of the show, also saw an earlier exit than her comics-based counterpart. Where book Andrea remains to this day a very-much-alive part of Rick’s group – essentially becoming his super-capable, crack-shot second-in-command – TV Andrea was taken in by the masculine wiles of ultra-baddie The Governor (it’s just such bullshit) and spent most of the fourth season being as unlikeable as possible before her psychopathic pseudo-beau throws her to the walkers. It was an unceremonious end, but they’d screwed up the character pretty badly, so… whatever.

the replacement

One of the sadder moments of season four comes when The Governor rocks up to Rick’s group’s adopted home, a local prison, with sagely patriarch Hershel as a captive-cum-bargaining-chip for total control of the correctional facility’s grounds. When Rick refuses to let the megalomaniacal eyepatch enthusiast simply waltz in and take over, The Governor slits Hershel’s throat and all hell breaks loose. It’s a watershed scene and a defining moment for the series, and it didn’t happen like that at all in the books.

Oh, Hershel still most definitely dies during the assault on the prison – but he basically tells The Governor outright to kill him (which he does) after witnessing his last surviving son, Billy, taking a bullet through the head, well after the battle starts. 

However, it’s TV-series latecomer (but early comic-book arrival and consequently crucial offsider to Rick) Tyreese who is beheaded at the hands of The Governor, using the katana blade belonging to Tyreese’s on-off lover Michonne to deal the riot-inciting blow. And it is gruesome.

(Uh, actually, I was going to put a picture of it in here, but given the current environment and possible sensitivity surrounding the act of beheading, I'll give you the option to view it only if you want to, and otherwise break the tension for a second with this GIF I made of my cat drinking from the tap.)

Anyway, to be honest, despite the fact comic-book Tyreese is dead and TV Tyreese is alive, it feels like they’ve kind of squandered the character with the way in which and time at which they brought him in. Having him around for so long, so early, in the books, led to some pretty amazing moments, not least of all being the time he dispatched an entire gymnasium of walkers with just his trusty hammer, only for the group to burst in to rescue him (or at least put him down if he had turned) and find him slumped in an exhausted heap, unscathed, with a pile of re-deadened zombies around him.

daryl? who the fuck is daryl?

It might be hard to imagine The Walking Dead without ubermensch, ultra-survivalist and best character ever Daryl Dixon, but when he (and by extension his brother, Merle) appeared on the series, nobody had any reason to get excited at the outset, because nobody had any idea who the hell he was. We had no idea he would become the breakout character of the series, responsible for threats of mass demonstrations should he perish, the object of worship for fan groups such as Dixon’s Vixens, and generally enjoy a ride as something of a pop-cultural phenomenon unto himself… because he simply did not exist in the comics.

When we first met Daryl, I was worried viewers would be robbed of a similar character – season-four arrival Abraham – because collectively, he and Merle seemed to kind of fill the niche of unflinching killbot that would come to be occupied by Abraham’s burly, moustachioed frame later in the story. But, pretty quickly, Daryl asserted himself as an entirely unique prospect, his character arc taking him from scowling 2D redneck to scowling 3D team player, an utterly invaluable member of the survivors’ group and easily the most popular character on the series, to the point that Skybound Publishing even released a hoax cover suggesting he’d be added to the comic books, as an April Fools’ prank.

He still does not actually exist in the book continuity, and Robert Kirkman has said that he has no intention of bringing him into the black-and-white paper fold, but that’s probably a good thing because, let’s face it, at least half of Daryl’s appeal is due to Norman Reedus’ actual portrayal of the man, not just the basic character design.

the road ahead

There have certainly been several other differences between the adaptation of The Walking Dead and its source material – book Rick lost his right hand ages ago, which has still yet to eventuate on the show; Lori (and baby Judith) died via shotgun blast through the torso rather than during childbirth; Carl, not Carol, killed a psychopathic child that had murdered their own sibling; Michonne was involved in an utterly horrifying scene (and equally unsparing revenge scene) with The Governor that goes way beyond anything we've seen on the show, and so on – but book readers start season five standing with the most uncertainty of any season to date.

We were expecting Hershel’s farm. We were awaiting the prison and Woodbury and The Governor with glee. But Terminus, the makeshift community at which the protagonists have ended up as captives in the wake of the prison’s fall – Terminus is a wholly new prospect, one not seen in the books, at least so far.

In the comic, the group’s post-prison destination is a community that certainly seems similar in some ways to Terminus, but it was generally an above-board kind of place. It has its problems, but not “locking new arrivals up in a train car and generally being shady as hell” kind of problems. Despite Terminus' promise of sanctuary, it's clear already that not all who arrive will survive it.

It’s too early to totally rule out that Terminus is indeed the same community at which the group ends up in the comics, but the differences so far heavily outweigh the similarities, and it feels, for the first time in five seasons, like I actually don’t know where this story is going any more, and it’s the most excited I’ve been about the narrative prospects of the show since it started airing in the first place.