Andrew Lincoln leaving The Walking Dead during season 9
This news was first reported by Collider, who noted that the actor is only going to be appearing in a handful of season 9 episodes. This news comes in the midst of reports that Lauren Cohan (Maggie) is also going to have a limited role on the zombie drama, which drew enormous ratings for much of its run before starting a small slide over the course of the past year or two.
Lincoln is an original cast member and plays one of the most-popular characters on the show (and really the character that the whole show revolves around) in Rick Grimes. It also makes us question even more the decision to kill off Carl (Chandler Riggs) during season 8. If Lincoln was going to leave, why not keep Carl alive and have him become even more of an heir apparent? Carl was always the hope that we had where there was a chance that people could move on from surviving into a reclaimed functioning society with Carl’s help. With Carl dying we thought that maybe Rick would pick up the torch – now that’s not happening and we are extra salty about Carl’s death.
With Andrew departing, we wonder now if the show is going to become even more of a showcase for Norman Reedus and his character of Daryl Dixon, given that he is one of the other remaining original characters and someone who is extremely beloved by fans. He’s also someone who has said that he has zero desire to ever leave the show — he’ll potentially be there now until the very end.
The ninth season of The Walking Dead is going to premiere on AMC a little bit later this year — once there is more news on the subject, we will be sure to have some of that for you here. For now, though, we’re pretty stunned by the news given that there wasn’t much of an indication this was coming.
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