7 Ways AMC Should End The Walking Dead

3. Turn Rick Into The Villain

Even though Rick is ostensibly the hero of The Walking Dead, the writers have always - either intentionally or unintentionally - made it clear that he's only one bad day away from being another Governor or Negan.

Throughout the show he's constantly flirted with the dark side, murdering surrendering saviours in season 8, threatening the innocent people of Alexandria in season 5 and butchering Gareth and the Termites a few episodes prior. Consequently, the show could close out with Rick embracing these villainous tendencies, immediately giving The Walking Dead its most nuanced antagonist ever.

A final season could chronicle his downfall and highlight how incompatible he secretly is with the slice of (relative) paradise he's created, either going so far as to have to be killed by his friends, or realising he needs to relinquish control of the thing he himself created as to no longer put it in danger.

Rick has always been motivated primarily by pure survival, almost getting a kick out the thrill of conflict (just see him running down Bob or any time he's out on the road with Daryl). He's a General rather than a peacekeeper, and a final season could wrangle with the fact that Rick is now the last obstacle stopping his community from properly becoming a new civilisation.

It would be a downer, but becoming a villain doesn't mean his legacy would be undone, and the final episodes could focus on Rick realising he doesn't belong in the civilisation he's built, too weathered by what he's done to function in a new world that's moved on from the barbarism of The Walking Dead's early years.