Robert Kirkman almost changed television history.
The auteur behind “The Walking Dead” was holding court in Hall H at San Diego Comic Con on Saturday. During a panel, he revealed that he wanted the TV version of his comics creation to deviate from the source material as much as possible.
“With Walking Dead, I was much younger and much more reckless,” Kirkman said. “I was an absolute lunatic. I would get in the writers’ room and be like, ‘Kill Rick Grimes today! I don’t care! It’ll be funny! People will freak out, and it’ll be fun!’ The writers were like, ‘Robert, you’re crazy. We can’t do that.’ But any time there were big changes in The Walking Dead, that’s what excited me.”
Rick wasn’t killed off, and in fact will appear in an upcoming Walking Dead spinoff, The Ones Who Live. Andrew Lincoln, who played Rick through Season 9 of the TV series, will join actress Danai Gurira (Michonne) for a new series that debuts in 2024.
Kirkman may not have killed TV Rick, but he did manage to eliminate the comics version. That Rick died in 2019.
