The Walking Dead Season 5 Spoilers: Robert Kirkman Knows How It All Ends

It might be odd to try to think of an ending for a show and comic book series like The Walking Dead, which feature a group of survivors constantly running and fighting for their lives in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies. But series creator Robert Kirkman has finally arrived at an ending for the comic book and has the last frame in his mind.

"I do know what I'm building toward, yes," he told EW.com. "I don't know exactly what issue that's going to fall on, per se, and I do have a lot of road laid out before that that is going to take a long time, but I certainly know exactly what I'm building to."

But has he actually pictured the final scene in his head?

"Yeah," he replied. "I think about a year or two ago. From the very beginning I would always plot these big, long overarching stories. So it'd be like, oh, they're going to get to the prison, then this is going to happen and then that's going to happen and that's going to happen. I wouldn't really map out how many issues those were going to take, but I would always make sure that I had somewhere between two and ten years of story mapped out ahead of me. About a year or two ago, I finally nailed down exactly what I want the ending to be. So now I've kind of got two trails of story going in my head. One working to where I'm at very far into the future, and one working from the end backwards. When those two stories meet, then I'll know exactly how long the story is. I'm rapidly approaching that point."

That last bit is interesting, because it could mean the comic ends sooner rather than later. But Kirkman also made it clear that the TV show won't suffer because of the comic book; in fact, he said the opposite is true.

"Luckily, because of the comic book series, this isn't a show where we're going to run out of ideas," he said. "This isn't a show where it's going to be, like, 'Well, they're clearly spinning their wheels just to keep the show going.' It's much more a matter of are we going to have enough seasons to get enough of the comic books into the show? I think that's more the struggle for us. That's what we're hoping to find out in the next few years."

Keep in mind the show has barely entered the 60s in the comic book, which is up to issue 130, so it doesn't look like we'll have a Game of Thrones situation here.

How do you think The Walking Dead show and comic book series will end? Let us know in the comments section.