ER Doctor Jordan Wagner has analyzed a tragic scene from The Walking Dead, expressing skepticism that the character involved would have survived. The zombie show is filled with plenty of horrific death scenes and major characters being permanently injured within the post-apocalypse. Some of these brutal scenes involve injuries that characters survive, but which change them for the rest of the show.

In a video from his Doctor ER YouTube channel, Wagner reveals the chances of survival after Carl gets shot in the eye during The Walking Dead season 6, episode 9, “No Way Out.”

Wagner’s analysis, which starts at 6:36, focuses on how the bullet from Ron’s gun entered Carl’s eye, making it unclear if he had survived the incident in real life. Check out Wagner’s analysis of the classic yet tragic scene below:

Woah! Where did the bullet go?

I’m assuming the bullet went into his eye. We’ll never be able to recover that, the eye trauma is done. There’s no more globe. Now you just have a hole. But now the issue ends up being, where did the bullet go once it actually passed through the eye? Was it going at an angle that it went out the side, or did it go straight through to the back, going through brain tissue?

In this situation, put pressure to the wound. Obviously you can’t get to a hospital at this point, so hopefully you’re not having brain swelling due to the trauma which can cause you to be altered. And then did it actually go into the balance center of the brain, or into the brain stem?

The balance center of the brain is your cerebellum. If it hits the brain stem, there’s not a lot of survival, because that’s where all your autonomic nervous system type function is.

Would Carl Have Really Survived Getting Shot In The Eye?

While Wagner highlights the many issues that could arise from Carl getting shot in the eye, Rick’s son eventually recovers from his injury. Although the bullet easily could have damaged his brain, Carl is shown to be fine in season 6, episode 10, “The Next World,” following a two-month time jump. While Carl eventually died in The Walking Dead season 8, he was bit by a zombie, which had nothing to do with his eye injury.

Based on Wagner’s statements, it seems unlikely Carl would have survived getting shot in the eye in real life. His analysis indicates the bullet would have been lodged deep in Carl’s skull, meaning he would have received brain damage that may not have been treatable in the post-apocalypse. The likelihood the bullet hit Carl’s brain stem also indicates a low chance of survival if he’d been shot in real life.

However, like in The Walking Dead, Carl losing his eye could have resulted in a miraculous survival if the bullet hadn’t lodged deep enough to pierce his brain. While in real life this may not have been as possible, the event can still be considered realistic despite the low chances of it ever happening. Even so, as Wagner indicates, Carl’s survival would still depend on how good his treatment would be.