For the longest time in The Walking Dead, Carl Grimes was the only child among his group of survivors. He never got the chance to live a normal childhood like the adults in his life, and the circumstances of the apocalypse matured him beyond his years. Yet, the show was never clear on how old Carl actually was.

The son of the protagonist Rick Grimes and his wife Lori, Carl was introduced as a fearful, innocent child in the first season of the zombie apocalypse series. After Season 2, he endured a few rough patches of disobedience and rebellion, leading to memes and fan jokes about Carl Grimes never staying in the house. His death in Season 8 reinforced just how tragic his life was, as he never survived long enough to experience the life his father was trying to build for him. However, the discrepancy surrounding his rapid growth throughout the seasons made The Walking Dead‘s timeline much more unclear.

Updated on July 3, 2024, by Arthur Goyaz: Carl Grimes was supposed to be the next Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead universe, but he died too soon, leaving a huge promise behind. This article was updated to draw a parallel between Carl’s fate in the TV show and in the comics and to reflect CBR’s current formatting standards.

Carl Grimes’ Age in The Walking Dead, Explained

According to The Walking Dead Comic, Carl Was 9 at the Start of the Apocalypse

Carl Grime’s Age Throughout The Walking Dead TV Series:

The Walking Dead Television Series
Season

12 years old
Seasons 1-2

13 years old
Season 3

14 years old
Season 4

14-15 years old
Seasons 5-8

The Walking Dead’s television series timeline is more vague than the comics, making it harder to source Carl’s age each season. However, Robert Kirkman was much more thorough and added clarity to the comics with the same name. Carl is nine years old in his first appearance in the comics (Issue 2). Unlike his comic counterpart, Carl is 12 years old in the first season of The Walking Dead. It’s not uncommon for TV or movie adaptations to push up a character’s age: the more mature an actor is, the easier it is to guide them through a complex production.

With Lori’s pregnancy and time well-spent on the road, the gap between Seasons 1 and 3 is roughly a year, making Carl 13. This means that as soon as he hit the teenage years, he had to watch his mother die and kill a young boy. But the tragedies don’t stop there, as Carl goes through multiple growth spurts. There’s a rough six-month jump between the Season 3 finale and Season 4 premiere, signifying the growing community at the prison and Carl hitting a rebellious phase in his youth. At that point in The Walking Dead, he was 13–14 years old.

From here, the timeline is extremely condensed. Seasons 5-8 represent the Alexandria and Savior arcs of the series, which surprisingly take place in under six months. A lot happens while surviving an apocalypse on the road. During this time frame, Carl was taken hostage by cannibals, met Enid, the girl he had his first and last relationship with, and lost his eye to a vengeful gunshot wound. Even with a vague time jump after the mid-season finale of Season 6, not much time has passed. Considering Season 8 takes place in just under a week, it’s not hard to pinpoint how old Carl was when he died. Carl was still around 14–15 years old when he was bitten and passed three days later, resulting in one of the saddest The Walking Dead deaths.

Why Didn’t Carl Look His Age in Later Seasons?

Carl Grimes Actor Chandler Riggs Was 18 Years Old When He Left The Walking Dead

It might be heartbreaking to realize that Carl died not long after his mother, but it’s also more surprising than anything else. There were five seasons and dozens of deaths between Lori and Carl’s death. Carl’s actor, Chandler Riggs, visibly aged so much during those seasons that it appears time works differently on the show.

There’s always that risk of having children on a show where time passes so slowly; an adult actor can easily hide their actual age, whereas a child’s age is much more exposed. It’s why no one questions why Lauren Cohan was playing a 22-year-old in Season 2, even though she was nearing her 30s.

Years after his death, Carl’s age is still widely debated within The Walking Dead fandom. The reality is, Carl’s age never really mattered. He was just a kid thrust into a world that wasn’t built for him to survive. No matter how old he was, Riggs pulled off the naivety, uneasiness and courage that made Carl The Walking Dead‘s unspoken hero until his final breath.

How Old Would Carl Have Been If He Had Lived?

Carl Would’ve Been 25 Years Old Had He Survived The Walking Dead

The shocking and unexpected factor surrounding Carl’s death created so much controversy that fans are still upset about it. Carl was meant to carry Rick’s legacy and, by extension, The Walking Dead‘s legacy. The series partly made up for it by aging up Judith Grimes, his younger sister, and molding her into a character worthy of following in her father’s footsteps, but it’s hard to shake the idea that Carl could’ve easily done the same.

Hypothetically, if Carl had lived until the end of AMC’s The Walking Dead, he would’ve been roughly 25 years old. Season 9 takes place after a year and a half, and another time jump of a whopping six years occurs in the middle of the same season. The series finale jumps an entire year to show the progress made between the Commonwealth and Alexandria. At this point, Carl would’ve been an adult who could’ve stepped up in his father’s shoes after his disappearance.

This leads to Rick and Michonne’s highly praised spinoff, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. The spinoff takes place over several years, but its present-day setting presumably takes place shortly after the events of Season 11 in The Walking Dead‘s overall timeline. At this point, Michonne reunites with Rick at the Civic Republic, and there’s a not-so-subtle hint in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon that Rick and Michonne may have already returned home. It’s safe to conclude that Carl would’ve been 25-27 at this point and would’ve exhibited his father’s determination and altruism to either lead Alexandria to prosperity or join Michonne or Daryl to bring Rick to freedom.

Carl Grimes Was 39 Years Old By the End of The Walking Dead Comics

Carl Grimes Takes on the Role of a Leader Following His Father’s Death

Carl Grime’s Age Throughout The Walking Dead Comics

The Walking Dead Television Comics
Issue

9 years old
Issue 2

13 years old
Issue 127

14 years old
Issue 187

39 years old
Issue 193

After Rick’s death in The Walking Dead comics, Carl at least lives until he’s 39 years old, and even has a child with Sophia Peletier, another character gone too soon in the show. Kirkman always made it blatantly clear that Carl was supposed to take the role of the leader when Rick died: the entire comic feels like a huge lesson to Carl, who seeks his independent self while following the steps of his father.

It was a huge disappointment that The Walking Dead TV show decided to discard the idea that was the foundation of the source material for pure shock value. Carl died in a moment of decline in the show when the Negan arc seemed to drag endlessly, making his anticlimactic zombie-bite death all the more revolting. On the other hand, the fact that Judith survives the prison arc in the show suggests that the showrunners had Carl’s death in mind for a long time. In the comics, Judith dies as an infant alongside Lori in an attack by the Governor, one of The Walking Dead’s most evil villains. The problem is that Rick and Judith’s father-and-daughter relationship was never explored as deeply as Rick and Carl’s.

In the comics, Carl’s young age doesn’t protect him from the hardened world but rather forces him to mature rapidly and face the person he wishes to become. By the time he’s a teenager, he’s lost his right eye after accidentally being shot by Douglas Monroe. His resilience to these setbacks positions him in a leadership role like his father, finally taking on responsibility and determining right from wrong. By the end of the comics’ run, which features a 25-year time jump, Carl is 39 years old with a wife and daughter. He’s the protagonist of The Walking Dead‘s final issue. This issue revolves largely around Carl reminiscing about the world that Rick helped build and how the responsibility of leading the people toward a path of prosperity now lies on him. The comics end with Carl reading stories about his father to his daughter, fulfilling what Kirkman’s vision for The Walking Dead had been all about.