The Walking Dead

Prior to departing AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead‘ Andrew Lincoln‘s Rick Grimes saw a few major characters from his past but two notable faces were missing. In the show, he was visited by Jon Bernthal’s Shane, Scott Wilson’s Hershel, and Sonequa Martin-Green’s Sasha. However, it was easy to notice that his son Chandler Riggs’ Carl and wife Sarah Wayne Callies’s Lori were both missing. However, it should be noted that this was planned on who would show up to Rick and who wouldn’t.

The explanation came from showrunner Angela Kang who shared that “there is a reason”:

“We dove into this idea of the ‘third man phenomenon,’ When people are close to death, sometimes they imagine seeing somebody that they knew or that they don’t know that helped drive them to survive and keep them going. We had these three particular characters [Shane, Hershel, and Sasha] who are sort of filling an emotional need for him in the moment, but Rick’s entire journey is looking for his family, and I felt, creatively felt, that if he sees Lori or Carl he would feel like, ‘OK, I fulfilled my mission. I found them. I’m home. I can lay down and die now.’
He needed to keep going for the family that is still there, and so to have that kind of restlessness of like, ‘I still haven’t found them. Where are they? Where are they?’ bringing him back to realizing his family has always been there all along ― that the people he’s fighting, for now, are still his family ― that’s what keeps him going. So he can’t find them. Otherwise, it’d be too easy for him to give up.”

With a trilogy of ‘The Walking Dead’ movies for Andrew Lincoln to still star in and potentially a return to the ongoing AMC series a few years down the road to be reunited with both his girlfriend and daughter if he does survive the films, it is easy to see why it makes sense that he didn’t see Carl or Lori here. If anything, they would be the perfect inclusion at the end of the third film if Rick Grimes’ time finally does come.

It should be noted that the voice of Lori did make an appearance. One of the many voices he heard saying “What’s your wound?” was actually said by Sarah Wayne Callies and was a callback to some of the first words which Lennie James asked as Morgan:

“She says, ‘What’s your wound?’ before he sees Shane. Each ‘What’s your wound?’ is kind of connected to the hallucination he’s having in the moment.”

So, there you have the official explanation as to why Carl and Lori weren’t featured in Rick’s final episode of ‘The Walking Dead.’

Do you agree with Angela Kang’s decision to not include Carl and Lori? Will Rick eventually find his way back to the rest of the survivors of ‘The Walking Dead’? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Source: Huffington Post