Andrew Lincoln

The news that Andrew Lincoln was leaving ‘The Walking Dead’ shocked everyone, but should we have seen this coming?  Going back through prior interviews with Lincoln regarding his character’s story arc, it seems that he has hinted at leaving the show (or even the show itself ending) for some time.  And he mentioned that he couldn’t imagine Rick going on if Carl was gone.  Well, as we now know, Carl (Chandler Riggs) died during Season Eight.  It appears that this may be the reason why Lincoln chose to say farewell to this hit series.

“I think that when we got the news that Carl was dying on the show — it certainly for me — it felt like very much a bookend of a much bigger journey that began in the hospital.

 

“Searching for his wife and his son were the two engines that kept this man alive at the beginning of the show eight years.  To lose the second engine that fueled him, at this point, certainly did feel, to me personally, not just the end of a chapter but a book, really.”

In December, when asked, Lincoln mused that ‘The Walking Dead’ needed to have an endgame in place, in order to give fans a satisfying close.

“I really feel that the fans — and also for my own satisfaction — that there deserves to be an end point. There needs to be an end game and that is something that is definitely being talked about.  I can’t get into all of that. But all of that will be answered.”

Lincoln lives in England with his family and commutes to the US to film ‘The Walking Dead’.  Other than the AMC series, Lincoln hasn’t sought roles in any other projects.  He may just want to take things easy and spend more time with his family.  He is expected to appear in six out of the 16 new episodes in season nine.

Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie, will also only be appearing in six episodes, as she has been cast in the new ABC series ‘Whiskey Cavalier’, which will debut midseason.  AMC has signed Norman Reedus to a new $20 million contract that would make Daryl Dixon the main character on ‘The Walking Dead’ from this point on.

Are you still watching ‘The Walking Dead’?  What do you think about the show losing its star?

Source: ComicBook.com