The Walking Dead season 9: Danai Gurira on a future without Rick

The Walking Dead season 9 is going to be an adjustment period for a number of different characters, but we imagine few are going to feel the emotional blow of Rick’s exit quite like Michonne. The two have a well-documented history and not having that character around will be a watershed moment for this character. She had already lost many before even teaming up with Rick, and now she’s set to lose him soon after Carl was killed off.

Is it guaranteed that Andrew Lincoln’s character will be killed on the show? Not necessarily, but as Danai Gurira told Entertainment Weekly, there’s going to be emotional reverberations no matter what:

“There’s no replacing him, there’s no just getting over it. It is something that, you know, of course our characters are dealing with as we deal with it … So it’s kind of — we’re in very clear emotional synchronicity with our characters right now, because the loss is felt by them and by us. But, you know, the beauty is that we’re family, and he created the TWD family with a few other folks, and so we get to still have this family and that’s a beautiful thing.”

We do know that there are some people out there who take these comments as some evidence that Rick Grimes could be dying during the season, we don’t necessarily see things that way. “Loss” does not necessarily mean that someone is dying; instead, it just means that there is a separation there. You’re losing something that you once had. Rick could just be heading off to a new horizon on his own, realizing that there is nothing left for him. Death does seem like the most predictable option for the show, given that so much of it has been from the Rick Grimes point of view, but it’s far from the only option. We think The Walking Dead really spent a lot of time debating this before coming up with a clear decision.

Related – Check out some more news, including a trailer for season 9 via Comic-Con!

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