Rick Grimes Is Going To Have A Very Bloody Exit From The Walking Dead

Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes has been through some pretty miserable, painful and terrifying situations over the course of The Walking Dead, and it sounds like his exit from the show midway through the ninth season will be no different.

We now have a hint of what’s going to happen courtesy of an interview the actor did with Entertainment Tonight, where he discussed his upcoming departure and explained the following:

“I think it was about day two of filming and I asked Greg Nicotero, who was shooting the episode, ‘How many pints of blood does a human actually hold? Because I’m not sure I’m going to make it through the credit sequence’”

That doesn’t exactly bode well for ol’ Grimey, but while it may sound like a fatal situation, it doesn’t directly confirm whether he dies or not. Aside from this, Lincoln explained that he’d originally planned to depart the show in season 8, but feels so attached to his character, his cast and the crew that deciding to leave was “an impossible decision.”

Here’s his reasoning for sticking around just a little longer:

“And I think that,  because the season was going so well, I was enjoying it, and we’d just been at Comic-Con — I just wasn’t ready. And I spoke about it, but it was like, you have to get people ready for it. And I realized very quickly that I wasn’t. So yeah, I went for one more.”

Norman Reedus also chimed in on Lincoln’s departure, jokingly calling him a “rat bastard” for abandoning the show and explaining that he was the first person Lincoln spoke to about his desire to leave.

“We kind of had a little pact that — if one of us would leave, the other one would leave. So I knew way in advance. I was really bummed. I tried to talk him out of it, but I get it. He’s got two little kids and he lives way over in England, so I understand. I can’t be mad at him. And I talk to him all of the time. But still, what a bastard.”

And while the particulars of Lincoln’s departure might have only been fixed fairly recently, that he would eventually leave the show at some point had been decided way back in season 4, with Lincoln laying the groundwork for his exit in chats with then-showrunner Scott Gimple.

“There were all these ifs and buts and strategies. And I said, ‘Eight sounds like a good number.’ Eight seasons was certainly something. Last season was a shape that I had in my head and it was certainly something that Scott was possibly thinking about as well that was a completion of a certain chapter which could be called Rick’s falling.”

Rick’s last stand is going to be in the episode “What Comes After,” scheduled to air on November 4th. This won’t be Lincoln’s last time on set though, as he’s confirmed that he’s returning on the other side of the camera to direct an episode of season 10.

The Walking Dead season 9, meanwhile, premieres tonight at 9/8c on AMC.