This article contains mild spoilers for The Walking Dead season 11.
The Walking Dead star Khary Payton says there's "so much" more he would've liked to have done on the horror drama – but there just wasn't enough time due to the show's huge ensemble cast.
With just three episodes of the long-running series left, the actor, who plays Ezekiel, was asked by Insider whether he was happy with his character's journey in the final chapter, to which he candidly replied: "No, I'm not satisfied at all."
He added: "I wish that... there are so many places and situations that I would've loved to explore. But that's one of the things that happens when you have a show that has this many dynamic and interesting characters. 48 minutes or, sometimes, over an hour-long episode just isn't enough."
Since his introduction on The Walking Dead's seventh season, Ezekiel has had a bit of a rough time of it. Before Rick, Daryl, and co came into his life, the typically optimistic survivor had set up his own prospering community, The Kingdom, but things went south for him after he got embroiled in the war against Negan. Both his mentee Benjamin (Logan Miller) and his pet tiger Shiva died during the conflict with the Saviors, then his adopted son Henry (Matt Lintz) was killed by new enemy Alpha and the Whisperers. The latter tragedy led to his romance with Carol (Melissa McBride) to break down, though the pair remain pals, and even more recently, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer – though Yumiko's doctor brother Tomi has since started treating that.
In season 11, episode 21, the former king and some of his friends were rounded up by Commonwealth governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins), who has had it in for our heroes since Eugene (Josh McDermitt) accidentally caused the death of her son Sebastian, and put to work on a railroad as part of a hard labor camp.
"These characters are beautifully constructed. I think the strength of the show is that these characters are nuanced, interesting, and there's so many of them that you just can't get it all in," Payton continued. "I am very sorry to say goodbye to Ezekiel and I cross my fingers and hope that maybe sometime down the road, we could tell the story of how Ezekiel came to be a king or something."
AMC currently has spin-offs surrounding Daryl (Norman Reedus), Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan), and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) currently in the works, so stranger things have happened. Then again, if the network had wanted to keep telling stories about every existing Walking Dead character, then it probably wouldn't be ending the original show...
The Walking Dead airs on AMC on Sundays in the US, and on Disney Plus each following day in the UK. Make sure you never miss an episode with our The Walking Dead season 11 release schedule, and check out our how to watch The Walking Dead guide if you're thinking of checking out or rewatching the main series and its spin-offs.
