The end of the last episode of The Walking Dead had a lot of folks rushing to social media to share their total shock to the events of the episode. Most of it related to the possible loss of a major character, but little seemed to focus on Rick Grimes at the end of the episode, which is understandable. It’s hard to really grasp everything that is going on when you’re still dealing with a shock like a major character death.
But if you look back, you’ll notice Rick is scared. His mad dash back down the road has put his life on the line, something that seems to be weighing on the now battle-tested leader. But with walkers closing in at the episode’s close, does Rick have a target on his back?
He’ll certainly walk away from the RV, maybe with a few nerves torn to shreds, but he’ll keep his life. But according to Scott Gimple in a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, it might not be such a sure thing in the future:
“He is scared — and he should be. I don’t know if he’s scared for himself,” Gimple said. “The direction those walkers are going in, that’s pretty scary because they are heading directly toward Alexandria. That’s the scary thing.”
“It’s a very big season. … We’re dropping everyone in the deep end of the pool,” Gimple said of the heart-racing start of season six that won’t feature a ton of time passing before the midseason finale. “Things can get worse — in different ways. There will be some very unique turns to this story coming up.”
With the survivors’ leader left in an impossible situation, Gimple confessed that this is a universe in which even a character like Rick Grimes can be killed off.“Absolutely. It’s a scary thing but this is a scary show,”
It’s certainly easy to call bullsh*t on such talk. He is the producer of a show that needs to keep a massive audience hooked with any tactic he can whip up, including teasing the death of your central character. It isn’t unbelievable, but I find it hard to take anything the producers say about this show as the full truth.
That’s not to say we can’t have a good time theorizing and debating the validity of such claims. And the fact that the show takes a different route than the comics makes this a lot easier to do. Gimple made sure to put that out in the open to THR, confirming the fate of Rick’s hand on the TV show:
“I’ll give you an absolute because I’ve been dealing with a lot of ambiguity in storytelling here in protecting the story: Rick’s hand is safe,” showrunner Scott M. Gimple tells The Hollywood Reporter. “You can proclaim it from the mountaintops: His hand is safe! He will be wrapping it. There will be some ointments involved.”
So don’t expect Rick’s hand wound to claim his digits. Apparently Robert Kirkman always regretted doing it in the original comics, so you can expect he won’t repeat the mistake. This might be disappointing to those of us who hoped Rick might be able to fashion some sort of makeshift hand, like Ash in Army Of Darkness. It could just be the residual effects from Ash Vs. Evil dead, but it’d be cool to turn Rick into this one handed monster with an iron hand. (Via The Hollywood Reporter)
