The New ‘Walking Dead’ Showrunner Has Detailed How The Show Will Say Goodbye To Rick Grimes

Andrew Lincoln isn’t leaving The Walking Dead because he misses his sheriff hat (lousy freeloading Carl). The upcoming season will be his last because, as he recently explained, his family lives in London (the show shoots in Georgia), and “I have two young children, and I live in a different country, and they become less portable as they get older.” That’s Lincoln as an actor, but what about Rick Grimes as a character How will the show handle his departure

“The goal this season was just to pay homage to that character — the character that brought us into the show,” new showrunner Angela Kang told Entertainment Weekly. “Rick Grimes has been somebody that people have loved watching, just loved this character’s journey. He is this man who was looking for his family, and found them, and lost many of them, but has fought on and on. And I think that’s meant a lot to people. And we just really wanted to be respectful of that character and send him off in a great way. So that was the charge for us this season.” She added that post-Rick, the Walking Dead writers will “tell the story of the people going forward, because it’s never been a story just about this one man. It started with him, but it’s always been a story about this group of people that have each other’s backs, that help each other survive, that help each other be more human.”

Kang won’t give up the goods on Rick’s fate (things typically don’t end well for characters exiting The Walking Dead), but based on her comments, it sounds like he has a better chance of making it out alive than most. That hasn’t stopped viewers from theorizing how he might die, though. We’ll find out when the show returns for season nine in October.