The Walking Dead kicked off its ninth season this week with an episode that was refreshingly low key, that made no big promises, and therefore had no need to cash in on them (more on the episode in its entirety later). The question on many viewers’ minds, however, is the fate of Rick Grimes, who will be killed off sometime in the front eight episodes of this season.
Most viewers may not have seen anything in the episode tipping of Grimes’ fate, and it’s possible that the episode didn’t actually didn’t offer any clues, but I believe that the theme of the episode — and, of the season, apparently — might have offered a very telling clue. It comes here, with Michonne looking upon this picture at a museum.
As I suggested in my episode preview, thematically speaking, the episode sets up something akin to both the post-Revolutionary War and post Civil War eras of America. There are now five colonies — Alexandria, The Kingdom, Oceanside, The Hilltop, and the Sanctuary — trying to figure out how to work together as a “country” in the wake of an All-Out War in which one of those colonies, The Sanctuary, was defeated.
In other words, it’s kind of like the Reconstruction era. The United Colonies of Alexandria have to figure out how to work with The Sanctuary, which was — until relatively recently — a bitter enemy. Meanwhile, many in the Sanctuary are probably feeling emasculated by the defeat and resentful of Alexandria for depriving them of the life they once had, one in which all the other colonies enriched them.
In the show’s Civil War metaphor, The Saviors are the South, and “The Famous Rick Grimes,” the man who ended the war, well: He’s Abraham Lincoln (played by Andrew, er, Lincoln). And we all know what happened to Abraham Lincoln 16 months after Robert E. Lee (Negan) surrendered? He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. And who is the most likely candidate for that role? Whoever painted this:
Look: Rick Grimes is not yet dead in the comic books, so his death is something that the series has to come up with on its own. It has to be a fitting death, one appropriate to someone of Rick’s stature in this series. What would be more fitting than to be assassinated by a bitter Savior angry and resentful of the “The Famous Rick Grimes,” the man who ended the war?
It seems absolutely perfect, doesn’t it?
