‘The Mist’ Showrunner Reveals His Motivation Behind That Shocking Premiere Death

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the season premiere of The Mist!

The Mist finally debuted on Spike last week, and ended the series premiere with a chilling twist that only fans of Stephen King would recognize.

Mrs. Carmody was perhaps the most memorable character in King’s original novella, and she played a large part in the 2007 film from Frank Darabont. However, as the pilot episode came to a close, the character was brutally killed off and half of her face was ripped away.

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No one saw the moment coming, but it is certainly setting the tone for the rest of the series. Showrunner Christian Torpe, and the folks over at Spike, aren’t afraid to take some big risks with this show.

So, why kill Mrs. Carmody so quickly?

During an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Torpe revealed that he wanted to pay his respect to the legendary character, and give her what the fans always thought she deserved.

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“We have our own, let’s call it our own Mrs. Carmody-ish storyline throughout the season. I didn’t want to keep the Mrs. Carmody character in there in that storyline, cause I wanted to free myself of the original material and just be able to go in a slightly different way. So, what do we do with this Mrs. Carmody character?

“I loved her so much in the book. I loved her so much in the movie. I just wanted to pay homage to both the character that King had created and the Marcia Gay Harden performance in the movie. So I decided to create this little character that sort of lives on the sideline, and then has a terrible fate in this pilot. Sort of just as an homage to the source material.

“It was just everything that I wanted to do with the Mrs. Carmody as a fan. You know all the hatred and frustration that we all felt with Mrs. Carmody when we saw the movie, I wanted to do that.”

That Carmody-ish character that Torpe talks about is actually Mrs. Raven, played by Frances Conroy.

This death goes a long way in showing the world that this is a different vision for The Mist than we might have expected. That being said, we’re all surely in for a wild ride as the rest of the season unfolds.

The Mist airs on Spike TV every Thursday at 10pm ET. While only the first episode as aired on the network, the first three are available to stream on Spike.com.