Right now, all the discussion amongst The Walking Dead community is about Carl Grimes – and with good reason. On last night’s midseason premiere, Chandler Riggs’ fan favorite met his end after suffering a walker bite. It was a tragic way for the character to go, and has left the show’s impassioned fanbase reeling, still trying to come to terms with the fact that they’ll never see Rick’s son again – except perhaps via flashback.
But what about Rick himself? Andrew Lincoln’s leader is certainly not in a good place right now, and though he’s remained at the core of the show throughout, we’ve been getting quite a few hints lately that he may not stick around until the end. From Lincoln to producer Scott Gimple and even creator Robert Kirkman, no one’s been shy about Rick possibly dying in the next season or two and now, Lincoln’s only added more fuel to that fire.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter about last night’s episode, the actor admitted that things don’t look good for his character at the moment, given that it ended with him in a pretty bad spot.
“I can’t really say anything about that, apart from that it doesn’t look good, does it?” Lincoln said.
Further in the interview, he was asked if he could see a scenario where The Walking Dead continued without him being part of it and if so, would that happen any time soon, to which he replied:
If you look at the blueprint of what the show is, it’s an endless story about how people survive, change and adapt to their surroundings. If ever there was a show that was able to survive, adapt and change to the death of a central character, I think we’ve done that and we’ve got more action going through it now [with Carl’s death]. You just witnessed the biggest bereavement to date, certainly in Rick’s world. The result of this all happening is, hopefully, a compelling and exciting drama — with the key word being surprising. It’s a very difficult question.
I love doing the show; I love the character; I love playing Rick. It’s been one of the most satisfying, thrilling and rewarding parts of my career. But I have always said that I want to finish in the way that we began: big scale, pared down vision of the world. There are lots of unanswered questions and we owe a debt to all of the viewers to answer a few of those.
So yes, once they’re answered, there is an endgame. I’ve said it before. There’s certainly an endgame in my head. Whether or not that’s the same endgame that’s in the producers’ heads or the people I work with, is another matter. That’s open for discussion.
Though he doesn’t explicitly say that his time on the show is almost up, this isn’t the first occasion that Lincoln’s played coy about the idea of Rick kicking the bucket. Recently, the actor even said that The Walking Dead was “beautifully set up” for another character to take over his role as protagonist. We’re not saying that Lincoln’s actively looking to wave goodbye to the part he’s played for eight seasons now, but we think it’s clear that he’d be open to the idea of exiting AMC’s hit series at some point in the near future.
That being said, if the show is set to continue following the comic books as closely as it has recently, then we should have at least several seasons left of Rick Grimes, as the comics character is still alive and, uh, not exactly well, but at least he’s not dead. Who knows what will happen, though? It’s painfully obvious that The Walking Dead isn’t afraid to kill off major characters – even if the cast aren’t totally on board with it – and it really does seem like no one’s safe at this point. Not even Rick.
