It Still Stings: The Walking Dead Dug Its Own Grave When Rick Grimes Left

Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:

From Negan and the Governor to all those brain-munching zombies, the post-apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead is full of monsters. But the biggest monster of all is The Walking Dead itself. Or, at least, that certainly became the case as the years dragged on. What started out as vibrant, must-see TV eventually decayed into something almost unrecognizable, a sluggish shadow of its former self. But who’s to blame? Where did it all go wrong?

We could sit around and endlessly theorize until the apocalypse hits for real, but anyone whose brain still remains intact will likely agree that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) leaving in 2018 signaled the beginning of the end. Or maybe the end of the end, if you’d already checked out after Glenn’s poorly handled death. Or perhaps even earlier than that, when showrunner Frank Darabont was unjustly fired after Season 1. 

Whatever the case, it’s safe to say that Lincoln’s exit didn’t help matters, and even Lincoln himself later admitted regret at leaving when he did—ok fine, Lincoln was kind of joking when he recalled this “terrible decision” back in 2021. Yet still, here we are, three years later with a new Rick Grimes spinoff called The Ones Who Live which reunites his character with Michonne after plans for a cinematic trilogy fell victim to a real-life virus circa 2020.

At the time, fans did not live for this leading man’s exit. Even before Lincoln’s departure was made official, an extensive fan-held survey on Reddit predicted that viewing figures would plummet if Rick’s departure was going to happen for real. And they were right. Many viewers did keep their promise and quit the show after Grimes left in Season 9, although it would be unfair to solely blame these declining ratings on the actor’s decision. Cable viewing wasn’t exactly thriving by this point, and nine seasons in, even a pop culture juggernaut like The Walking Dead was inevitably going to lose viewers eventually.  

But it’s not just Rick leaving that made things worse—it’s the way he left. While fans were relieved at first to see Rick survive, that initial intrigue around his capture by the CRM soon gave way to frustration and eventually boredom. Michonne, Daryl, and the rest of them believed Rick to be dead, but we knew better, which left fans in a weird limbo where we waited to see what had become of Rick after Jadis snatched him away. 

Clues came few and far between until Jadis eventually showed up in The World Beyond spinoff, confirming that Rick was her ticket into the CRM. And that was pretty much it. Aside from some insight into the whole “A” and “B” mystery, there wasn’t so much as a glimpse of Andrew Lincoln in sight, which was especially frustrating for fans who only stuck with this CRM-focused spinoff to see him in the first place.

Awkward attempts to subsequently rotate fan-faves into Rick’s role as protagonist never quite worked, no matter how good characters like Daryl, Maggie, Carol, and Negan are (not to mention the actors who played them). That’s because The Walking Dead is Rick’s story and it always has been. 

Rick is the one who woke up in that hospital bed all the way back in Episode 1 and he’s been our window into this nightmare world ever since. That’s not to say the supporting cast weren’t important (because they were), but it’s Rick’s journey that compelled us to stay for the nine years that followed. After Lincoln left, watching The Walking Dead felt almost like watching Buffy without Buffy or even Daryl Dixon’s show without Daryl. The story just doesn’t feel complete without him.

Perhaps if The Walking Dead had gone down The Magicians route after Quentin’s exit and wrapped things up with one final epilogue season, that could have been something special. But instead of exploring what it means to live in a world without its protagonist, AMC simply plowed ahead with multiple extensions to that world without finishing off the story it set out to tell in the first place.

And you know what would have been the perfect way to continue telling that story? Through Carl, Rick’s son… except he was killed off just one season earlier. That already felt like a mistake at the time, because why would you set Carl up to be Rick’s successor all these years only to divert from the comics and send him off early for shock value? Robbing Carl of his life (and Chandler Riggs of a job) invalidated an exorbitant amount of development from previous seasons while simultaneously robbing the show of a future that made sense without Rick.

Of course, The Walking Dead did technically end with Rick’s story via a last-minute cameo in the series finale, but it wasn’t the end of his story. Instead, that final episode was forced to juggle attempts at resolution while simultaneously setting up multiple spinoffs that didn’t feel particularly satisfactory in the moment. AMC’s extended universe took priority over telling a complete story, and Rick’s arc was hurt by this most of all. 

For fans who have no interest in the spinoffs, their protagonist was snatched away nine seasons in only to vanish for years before being called upon for one last cliffhanger, which is not the fitting end anyone deserved.

It’s like the Dama said last year in Maggie and Negan’s Dead City spinoff: 

“The show started out with a bang… but then there was a plot twist. You thought you had your hero, but he got away. And what good is a hero offstage? So naturally, the ending fizzled. And let’s face it, everyone knows the ending is all that matters.”

Even if she wasn’t technically talking about The Walking Dead itself, Dama hit the nail on the head: The Walking Dead butchered its own ending years before it even happened, and its spinoffs are futile attempts at best to make up for it. But perhaps she (and we) will be proven wrong when The Ones Who Live, billed as a limited series intent on providing what the flagship series failed to, gives Rick and Michonne an ending that truly matters. Let’s hope so, because as it stands, The Ones Who Live is far too concerned with a story that should have died already, and that will always sting.

David Opie is a freelance entertainment journalist. To hear his ramblings on queer film and TV, you can follow him @DavidOpie.

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