Andrew Lincoln makes final appearance on 'The Walking Dead'
Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead. Credit: AMC/Jackson Lee Davis
Spoiler alert: This story contains revelations about Sunday's episode of "The Walking Dead."
WHAT IT'S ABOUT At the conclusion of "What Comes After," viewers learn that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) has survived the series that he launched nine seasons ago. In a Chekhov's Gun twist — the famed trope that demands that if a gun is mentioned in the first act of a play then it must be fired in a later act — that mysterious helicopter that first appeared last season returned to save a badly wounded Rick. He survived, but Lincoln — the best-known cast-member of one of TV's major hits — is gone for good from "The Walking Dead."
MY SAY Rick lives!
Or, no doubt, a few cranky "Walking Deadheads" are screaming this at their set: "He lives?! He was supposed to be dead."
To those I would say, set aside your crank. Showrunner Angela Kang never said he was going to die in this episode, as many assumed. Instead, she and AMC said he would never return to the series. Don't be surprised if Lincoln turns up elsewhere, perhaps even another spinoff series set in the Deadverse.
(In fact, AMC announced Sunday night that Lincoln will star in a series of "Walking Dead" movies starting next year, while Lincoln said via news release, “It’s not the beginning of the end, it’s the end of the beginning. And I like the idea that we get to tell a bigger story, maybe with a sort of wider vista. And I’ve always been interested in what’s going on out there, you know, whether or not there is contact with the wider world. I want to know the meta of it all.")
Moreover, who really wanted Rick dead anyway — or dead according to the terms so morbidly enforced on this series? He was a beloved character, the center of this blood-and-guts enterprise. There he was, impaled on that rebar at the beginning of the episode, as the zombie "herds" advance. That rebar was bad enough. Did he have to become their lunch, too?
There was much to admire in "What Comes After." The dream sequences were masterful, all callbacks to beloved characters gone too soon. Scott Wilson as Hershel Greene made one of the last public appearances of his life for this (he died Oct. 6 at age 76). Jon Bernthal brought Shane Walsh back as vividly as if he'd never been gone all these seasons. Sasha — Sonequa Martin Green — got the best line: "You did your part like I did mine."
These scenes, that line, and really all of "What Comes After," accomplished something that has rarely happened if at all over the past few seasons: They located the emotional heart of "TWD." After so many wars and so many Negans, it seemed safe to assume that the heart was gone forever, if it was ever there in the first place.
It was also — has this word ever been applied to "TWD"? — sentimental. That Wang Chung song, "Space Junk," that tracked as Rick was evacuated out was (as Deadheads know) the same song that played during the famed tank scene in the first season. "I'm riding on the space junk / And it's bringing me to you." It's as if the producers knew then what the producers know now. Rick, of all people, deserved better than the usual demise.
Now, onward, hopefully upward. The next time you see "The Walking Dead," it will be five years in the future, while Judith Grimes — that cute toddler and progeny of Rick and Lori Grimes — will be more grown up, with a six-gun in her hand and dad's Stetson on her head. (Yes, the final scene explained).
People do grow up and survive in this dystopia. Rick lives on too. Maybe Carl's (Chandler Riggs) dream of a utopia comes true after all. At least the dream of a better show seems possible.
BOTTOM LINE A gift to fans, which offered a glimmer of hope for this fading hit.
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