Robert Kirkman Says He Wanted to Kill Rick Grimes Off Early On in THE WALKING DEAD Series

The Walking Dead wrapped up its eleven-season run last year, bringing its flagship series to a close, and moving the franchise into the age of spinoff series - including The Walking Dead: Dead City, which follows Maggie and Negan; The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, which is self-explanatory; and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, which centers around the original star of the franchise, Rick Grimes, and his wife, Michonne.

These series are made possible by the fact that these characters have survived the series, some from the first season, and some from later on. But if it had been solely up to creator Robert Kirkman, creator of the series and the graphic novels the show is based on, Rick Grimes would not have made it nearly this far!

At Kirkman’s Entertainment Weekly-hosted panel at SDCC this past weekend, the Editor-in-Chief explained that in his haste to create a series that was different from the comics, one storyline he kept pushing was the untimely death of Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln.

"With Walking Dead, I was much younger and much more reckless. I was an absolute lunatic. I would get in the writers' room and be like, 'Kill Rick Grimes today! I don't care! It'll be funny! People will freak out, and it'll be fun!' The writers were like, 'Robert, you're crazy. We can't do that.' But any time there were big changes in The Walking Dead, that's what excited me."

The fans thought that Rick was dead back in Season 9, but it turned out that he had just been injured and was rescued and taken away by helicopter. And the narrative Kirkman wanted to deviate from came when his character died in the comics, but lived on in the series. I’m glad Kirkman didn’t get his way in the beginning, because Rick was the heart of the show, and I can’t wait to watch his new series, which is set to premiere in 2024.