What happened to Merle in The Walking Dead? Details from the AMC series, explored

The Walking Dead has been a part of the world for fifteen years now, as the first episode of season 1 aired on October 31, 2010. One of the fan-favorite characters in the series was Merle Dixon, Daryl Dixon's (Norman Reedus) older brother, played by Michael Rooker. His appearance was very little in the first season, but he physically returned in the third season.

Rooker's Merle sat out the entire second season, apart from appearing as Daryl's hallucination in the fifth episode, Chupacabra. As mentioned above, he returned in The Walking Dead Season 3, but it was short-lived as fans saw Merle for the last time in the penultimate episode of that season, This Sorrowful Life.

What happened to Merle in The Walking Dead?

Merle Dixon was one of the earliest characters in The Walking Dead Season 1, as fans met him for the first time in the second episode. He is revealed to be Daryl's older brother, who would later go on to become one of Rick's more trusted allies, and leads a solo spin-off series, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon. Fans initially were not thrilled with Merle because they felt that the character was caricaturish.

However, Merle became a fan-favorite over time, and by the time he met his maker in season 3 episode 15, This Sorrowful Life. Robert Kirkman was especially appreciative of Michael Rooker's performance a decade ago:

"I actually got a chance to hang out with him and he's a totally awesome guy. He always plays bad guys and psychos and it's weird, because he's this really boisterous, friendly guy. But yeah, his character is very important to the life of the show. He's a completely original character that was never in the comic. He's kind of the first human that they come across where it's like, 'Hey, this guy's really dangerous.' Also Michael Rooker likes to ad-lib. He got us over our cursing limit a couple of times. I think it was a bit of a pain in the a** for the post production people."

The third season saw Merle become the right-hand man of The Governor. It is here that Merle was given a redemption arc, and people believed that he would stick around because he was an original character. But he was killed off just as he was winning back the viewers' and fans' love in the second-last episode of the third season.

Michael Rooker has expressed his exit from the long-running zombie series:

Michael Rooker has been open about the fan-favorite character's exit from the zombie show. During his appearance at the Wales Comic Con in January 2020, he said this in the panel:

"I don’t prefer either. I made more money on Guardians [of the Galaxy]. Walking Dead, they were cheap. AMC was very cheap. That’s probably why they killed me off, because they knew I was gonna get more money the next season."

However, it seems that they might've been joking, as the very next day, he took a screenshot of an entertainment portal and posted it on his Instagram handle along with this caption:

"It always amazes me how some folks can make a friendly fun joke into some irate statement. The impeachment proceedings must be getting a bit boring and redundant. Now Bloggers and fan pages have to resort to finding anything to b***h and moan about.....All in all, I guess you got to love this shit... I wonder if it’s true any press is good press??? Well, at least it used to be that way....... anyway, this is as close to a response to this bulls**t from me as you will ever get. Now put your phones down and go ride a bike or something. Btw, if there happened to be any grammatical mistakes misspellings stuff like that in this post...I will be desperately looking forward to hearing from all the grammatical mistake Nazis out there. Rooker signing off🤪👍🏻"

While his 2020 comments might've been a joke, Michael Rooker might be feeling disappointed about exiting The Walking Dead. Hinting at a redemption arc for Merle, Rooker said this in a TMZ interview:

“But we all [move on]. That’s what we do. We’re actors. We move on. We do The Walking Dead. I get killed off. I don’t know why. They don’t know how to write for the character! So, I move on.”

Then, Rooker thanked the fans for recognizing him as Merle:

“They’re still there. My fans from The Walking Dead, the Merle Dixon fans, they’re still there. And nothing wrong with that. Yes [Yellowstone fans will still love Costner]. It’ll be okay.”

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While his time in the AMC zombie show might be short-lived, Rooker would go on to have a storied career in both movies and TV shows. His latest role is that of Red St. Wild in Peacemaker Season 2.

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