SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers and explicit images from the latest episode of "The Walking Dead."

Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard's long-running Image Comics series has had no shortage of major, game-changing moments over the course of its 150-issue (and counting!) run. But while fans look forward to each one's arrival on the AMC series, they learned early on that the show and comic will veer in different directions as often as they align. Perhaps the biggest example is Rick Grimes' hand, which has been missing for most of "The Walking Dead's" comic run, but is likely never going to disappear on the television series.

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The beauty of that uncertainty played out last night, when Carl was shot in the eye early in the Season 6 midseason premiere. Longtime fans figured it was coming -- and some Russian promo art more or less confirmed it -- but there was just enough doubt that it remained a powerful and somewhat shocking moment.

"We wanted to follow the graphic novel in terms of the extent of the injury because in the comics," Executive Producer and special effects supervisor Greg Nicotero explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "Carl's wound is very important in in terms of how he moves forward."

Nicotero also shared some photos of the dummy used for Carl's injury, an eerily life-like likeness of actor Chandler Riggs, sans his right eye.

Riggs is taking his character's transformation well, posting the following photo to Twitter late last night:

eye hoped u enjoyed the episode #thewalkingdead pic.twitter.com/xnIZTdGoqC- chandler riggs (@chandlerriggs) February 15, 2016

In fact, according to Riggs, the loss of Carl's eye may actually make his job as an actor easier. "It's harder to film, which makes it easy for me to play Carl because it's such a drastic difference in how I live," the young actor told THR. "It's easier to make that change."