The Walking Dead - Episode 2.12 - Better Angels - Interview with Robert Kirkman

Another show, another major death. At this rate you’ve got enough cast members left for around 8 more episodes and then I assume it’ll just be footage of zombies walking about grunting at each other.
ROBERT KIRKMAN: Don’t spoil my show! [Laughs]

Shane, of course, also dies early on in the comic book version of the Walking Dead. When you were initially working up the show did you always have it in your mind that he was doomed?
To a certain extent. We knew from [the time we cast] Jon Bernthal that Shane was eventually going to die, that we were going to eventually follow the storyline from the comic. Frank had actually planned to do it at the end of the first season before he knew that the first season was going to be six episodes. Once the show was given a six episode order it was decided that we would hold Shane’s death for the second season. But from the very first day of planning the second season it was mapped out that Shane would be kicking the bucket at the end of this season.

Following Dale’s death last week, no one would have blamed you for making this episode a let’s-pause-for-breath show. Why did you decide to have one major fatality followed almost immediately by another?
There was actually another death in this episode that at the ever last minute, after the script was written, we decided not to do. So we were going to have three major deaths in these two episodes but then that was decided it was just too much. I think Glen Mazzara is adamant about packing as much story into these episodes as possible and doing cool stuff and moving from idea to idea very quickly. And I am a mad man who wants to make these shows as bloody as possible. So between the two of us we could have three or four major deaths in every episode and we would be happy. Thankfully, cooler heads prevail. Other writers are always going, “Guys! Guys! What are we doing?” So we tone things down a little bit.

Source: Full interview @ Entertainment Weekly