The Walking Dead comic book came to a close after 16 years this past summer, with issue #193 only being revealed as the last issue following the shock twist of #192. After all he’d been through, Rick Grimes finally met his end when he was shot while sleeping. What was even more surprising, though, was that it wasn’t a major antagonist who got the better of him but a character who could be described as a minor annoyance at best, Sebastian.
On the red carpet for the TWD season 10 premiere, ComicBook.com caught up with creator Robert Kirkman and asked him why he chose Sebastian of all people as Rick’s killer. The comic book writer revealed that the weakness of the character was the whole point. In a weird way, it’s actually a testament to Rick’s strength as a leader.
“Rick Grimes fixed the world to the point where he was so safe that he could be killed by the weakest character in the book. It’s a statement on how good of a job he did… At no point in the history of the comic could he have been killed that way. It wasn’t until the very end that he was able to relax to the point where [that could happen].”
After Rick’s death in #192, the final issue then skipped forward many years to when Carl is an old man and the world has moved on to a pretty civilized point. What it didn’t do, though, was explain the fates of what happened to other familiar characters during that time. Kirkman was asked if he had these answers figured out, to which he revealed that he had some ideas.
“I definitely have little tidbits of, ‘Oh, that happened to this person, that happened to this person,’ and you see some glimpses of that in the last issue. But there’s obviously a lot more going on.”
Fans are wondering if Rick’s comic death will play out on screen in the upcoming Walking Dead movies that’ll star Andrew Lincoln and are coming exclusively to cinemas. The stories of the two converge just as often as they diverge, so it’s hard to say right now.
The Walking Dead season 10, meanwhile, airs on AMC in just a couple of weeks, on Sunday, October 6th.
