MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: The Walking Dead

> They made a big mistake of writing off the "Shane" character way too early because I
> could envision a plot with Shane backstabbing Rick and his group in order to help out
> the governor of Woodbury.
>
> I guess the actor playing Shane got tired of the show and wanted to leave for
> different acting work?

Actually...

[COMIC SPOILERS, if anyone cares]

...they kept the Shane character around a lot longer on the show than they did on the comics. In the comics, Rick and Shane have their big showdown at the end of the first book. And then, when they figure out later on that everyone is infected and you don't have to be bitten to turn, Rick drives all the way back to where they buried Shane, digs him up, and shoots him in the head.

I think it's a good story arc, two guys who are like brothers before, slowly torn apart by the craziness of the world around them. It was inevitable that they were going to have it out, and only one of them was going to walk away. I agree that Shane could have been a good ongoing villain, but that's not the style in The Walking Dead. The villains tend to have a finite arc and a definite end, and then they move on to the next big bad. Both the show and the comics tend to follow this same pattern.