It Looks Like Andrew Lincoln Is Leaving ‘The Walking Dead’
News dropped last night that ‘The Walking Dead‘ may be losing another major cast member in Season 9… Rick Grimes himself, Andrew Lincoln. The story of Lincoln’s departure first appeared in an article on Collider last night, but has since been confirmed by sources for THR and Deadline, so it would appear to be true.
Poor Rick has been through a lot in the last 8 seasons, so it’s no great shock Lincoln has made the decision to move on. This will be another major departure from the source material though, something the tv series has done to mixed success. Some characters, such as fan favourite Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) doesn’t actually appear in the comics at all, whereas Rick’s son Carl (Chandler Riggs) was killed off on the show… much to the annoyance of a lot of fans… but is alive and well in the comics.
The plan would be to “phase out” Rick’s role on the show during the next season, something they are also having to do with Maggie, due to Lauren Cohan’s commitments to her new series ‘Whiskey Cavalier’. After AMC failed to make a good enough deal to keep Cohan around, she is only scheduled to appear in 6 episodes of the next season.
That does beg the question, “where does the series go from here?..” Well, firstly, AMC seems determined to tie in Norman Reedus for the foreseeable future by negotiating a deal which reports say will land him more than $20 million, and push the character more centre stage.
On a more general note, if you’ve ever listened to the Walking Dead UK Podcast we co-host with Entertainment Talk, you know one of the main criticisms we have of the series is its lack of an endgame. That would seem to be something that concerned Lincoln too who commented to THR in February “there’s certainly an endgame in my head. Whether or not that’s the same endgame that’s in the producers’ heads or the people I work with, is another matter. That’s open for discussion.”
We have also frequently said ‘The Walking Dead’ cast is a little large and unwieldy, so you end up not spending enough time with characters, so losing a few is not necessarily a bad thing… However, losing Rick just after killing Carl?… That could be a very tough pill for some fans to swallow.
We should find out more when ‘The Walking Dead‘ returns to our tv screens in Autumn 2018.
