You’d have to search far and wide to find a character so central – and so important – to a TV show as Rick Grimes was.
And yet, after nine seasons (and change), Andrew Lincoln made his exit from The Walking Dead, leaving the hit series to set a new path for itself without the man who had anchored it for so long. Of course, given the popularity of Lincoln’s hero, season 9 was never going to be the true end for him and already, we know that AMC are hard at work planning out a movie trilogy for Rick.
But what comes after that? Well, not much, it seems, as these films will indeed be the final chapter of his story. And that’s because according to sources close to WGTC – the same ones who said Han would return in Fast & Furious 9 and a Scream reboot is in the works, both of which we now know to be true – AMC plans to kill Rick off in the aforementioned trilogy.
How exactly it’ll happen, we don’t yet know, but we’ve been told that it’ll be a heroic death, with the character making some sort of sacrifice to save others. Beyond that, we can only speculate on how Lincoln’s survivor might make his true exit from the world of TWD, but we trust AMC to give him the sendoff he deserves.
In any case, we know that the network is definitely aiming for a real cinematic event when it comes to these films, as The Walking Dead boss has teased that they’ll be very different from what we’ve seen before, with the EP telling Entertainment Weekly the following a while back:
The scale is bigger and the budget is bigger, and it’s The Walking Dead, but heightened, both in the narrative themes, but also in just what we see onscreen. I say heightened, but I should also say it’s also very different. It’s not going to be the exact same thing we saw on television, just larger. We are going in some wild new directions. We really want to deliver [the fans] something special, something worth their trip to the movies. We’re trying to be very deliberate and deliver something new. We’re going to be filling that screen with a brand new world.
That sure sounds good to us, and though these films will now be arriving with a tinge of sadness as we know they’ll spell the end of Rick Grimes, it only makes sense that they’d wrap up his tale for good at some point. As much as we all love him, The Walking Dead can’t hold onto Rick forever, as it needs to keep introducing new characters and stories to stay fresh and exciting. And after so many years with Lincoln’s fan favorite casting a huge shadow over things, it might actually be a refreshing change of pace to know that he’s completely out of the picture.
