Warning: The following contains massive spoilers from the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead. Proceed with caution.
"My bloody Valentine, sweet, bloody Valentine."
Well, that just happened.
And by that, we of course mean poor Carl Grimes just lost his eye on the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead. That's right, the AMC hit finally delivered one of the most intense moments from the comic books, somehow upping the ante in the process.
In what has to be one of the series' starkest moments of child brutality—which is truly saying something when you take walker Sophia, the whole Lizzie and Mika tragedy, Beth's horrible end, and, oh yeah, that other time Carl got shot—we watched as two kids met their particularly grisly ends. And it's all because Sam couldn't keep his mouth shut.
As last fall's midseason finale foreshadowed in its final moments, Rick's plan to get through the walker herd that had overtaken Alexandria by camouflaging themselves in zombie guts proved to be too much for the mentally unstable kid. He panicked after seeing a walker kid, stopped moving, and began making way too much noise for his own good. It was all over from there. The walkers descended upon the dumb kid, ripping at his neck, causing Jessie to scream at the sight of her child being eaten alive. Naturally, she was next to go.
Preoccupied with her imminent death, Jessie wouldn't let go of Carl's wrist, leading Rick to jump to action after a few sad moments where the happy future he thought he might have with the pretty Alexandra Breckenridge flew out his head. As he chopped her hand off at the wrist, someone's gun made its way onto the ground and into Ron's hands. Out of his mind after just having watched his family brutally die, he aimed the weapon at Rick, blaming him and his plan for their deaths. And well, that's where things somehow got even worse.
Hoping to protect Rick and keep the sound of gunfire from alerting even more walkers to their presence, Michonne literally cut Ron in half with her sword. Seriously, she basically split the kid in two. It was horrendous. Of course, Ron couldn't die without one last awful moment to cap off his horrible existence. (Remember how this plan was only necessary because he tried to kill Carl in the garage of the house they were hiding in, letting walkers in in the process? God, Jessie's kids were the WORST.) His finger still squeezed the trigger, but his body being sliced in half screwed up his aim, sending the bullet right into poor Carl's peeper.
The loss of Carl's eye is huge moment for the show. As fans of the comic know, and non-readers can probably surmise from the severity of the injury, the kid comes out of this a changed person. To see how the writers will incorporate that into the series should make the second half of season six even more intense—which we didn't think was even possible.
What did you think of Carl's big moment? Sound off in the comments below!
And to hear star Chandler Riggs' take on Carl's big moment, check back with E! Online at 7 a.m. PT tomorrow morning!
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.