Why Andrew Lincoln is leaving The Walking Dead now

Why is Andrew Lincoln leaving The Walking Dead? It feels like this is a question that has been asked many times over and we do have a reasonably coherent sense as to what the answer is: He wants to spend a little bit more time with his family, which is understandable. He lives in London when he is not filming the show, so whenever he is in Atlanta filming, he is away from them.

Yet, what makes this year different from any other? There have certainly been some opportunities for him to walk away in the past, but he is chosen not to. The big reason why he is making the choice now, at a big time of transition for the show with a new showrunner and less than one year removed from it losing Chandler Riggs, has nothing to do with any of those big changes. Instead, it has mostly to do with the specific ages of his kids. This is what he had to say to Entertainment Weekly on the subject:

“I have two young children, and I live in a different country, and they become less portable as they get older … It was that simple. It was time for me to come home.”

It is true that once kids really get deep into school, moving them about constantly for the sake of your own work isn’t going to work the same way it once did. You want them to carve out their own slice of life, make friends, and you want to be there in order to have some sort of part in it. Really, this is one of the things that can be best defined in this particular way: There are so many things bigger than just a job, which is something we really understand here at CarterMatt since we are a family run website and making sure there is a good balance of work and home life is important to our pack.

Andrew will probably continue to be a part in The Walking Dead family, as he could easily do a few conventions a year. One of the things that we’re the most interested about when it comes to him and the show now is whether or not he would watch it, given that he has said in the past that he doesn’t like to watch himself and therefore would not check out any of the show when it came on the air.

Related – Originally, Lincoln planned to leave the series at the same time as Norman Reedus

New episodes of The Walking Dead will start airing this fall, and signs point to you getting a chance to see a handful of episodes featuring Lincoln before his exit.

As always, we do welcome your thoughts in the attached comments! Also, remember now that you can like CarterMatt on Facebook to get some other information on the series. (Photo: AMC.)