The Walking Dead: Why Rick's [SPOILER] Was A Mistake

1. The Three-Movie Deal, And Explaining The Impossible

So, that was Rick's last episode, but it's not the last time we're going to see Rick. Quickly following its airing was a major announcement - the one teased by Scott Gimple a little while back - that Rick would return in what's currently planned to be three movies, set to have big-budgets and air on AMC.

So this is how the story of Rick Grimes ends. Not on the TV show where he has years of development, relationships, and fans, but in a series of loosely-connected movies that will show us a part of this universe we've not seen before. And not even just movies, but TV movies.

Given how Rick's story goes, this makes sense to a degree, because it's obvious there has to be more after that. They can't simply end his journey on a cliffhanger (except they have done, to the fans who won't watch these movies). But it's still going to be around a year, at least, before we get the first of the movies, by which time it's hard to know how many people will still be watching The Walking Dead, and that's only going to tell part of the story - there are years between his being taken away here, and where the show jumps to afterwards.

The series, then, loses its star, and presumably needs to go on with its remaining characters having made their peace with the fact Rick is dead and moved on in a way that honours his legacy. Rick, meanwhile, will be somewhere new and strange, recovering from life-threatening wounds, and yet have no way of getting back to his family, and explaining how/why Rick is kept wherever he is, rather than going back, is going to be one of the hardest quandaries for the movies to solve.

There's no easy fix to this; no way of cleaning up the mess and tying things up nicely, and it also means we're going to have to see either characters from the show in the movies (somehow), or Rick back on the show for an actual last appearance, neither of which feels like a wholly satisfying end to the story of the show's biggest and most important character. And all that could've been solved, had they just had the guts to kill him.

What did you think of Rick's last episode? Let us know down in the comments.