'The Walking Dead' episode that kills Carl will be extra-long

Warning: Spoilers for the eighth season of The Walking Dead ahead.

The Walking Dead may be killing off Carl Grimes in the upcoming mid-season premiere but at least it's giving him a special extended episode to send him off with.

The upcoming ninth episode of Season 8 of The Walking Dead will be 82 minutes in length instead of the usual 60 minutes, Entertainment Weekly reported Wednesday, likely to give Carl a proper send-off after he was bitten by a zombie in the previous episode.

The fact that Carl was bitten and will either turn into a zombie or be killed before he does was a huge surprise for fans of the series. Carl is one of the only characters still around from the first season and is the son of the main character Rick Grimes, plus, Carl never experienced a fatal encounter like that in the comics.

Chandler Riggs, the actor who portrays Carl, was himself shocked to find out he'd be leaving the show, he told The Hollywood Reporter in December.

"I didn't expect for Carl to ever get killed off," Riggs told THR. "But it serves a good purpose in the story. There's still a little more left in Carl's story — in episode nine — and that impacts Rick, Michonne and everyone. Although Carl's story is coming to an end it's not over yet."

The writer of the comic book series, Robert Kirkman, shared his confidence in the showrunners and their decision to have this happen to Carl.

"I think [showrunner Scott M. Gimple] first brought it up to me as a possibility probably about a year ago at this point," Kirkman told Entertainment Weekly. "At first, I was kind of like, 'Well, that’s a big one, you know?' I might have had a little bit of trepidation. But once he laid out to me exactly what his long-term plans were, and the things that come out of it, and the things that it leads to, it was something I got on board with."

The mid-season premiere will air Feb. 25 on AMC.