Given the show’s history of gory demises, what could be more shocking than for Rick to simply die of, say, a heart attack or a stroke? Then again, neither of those swan songs — nor, for that matter, a walker bite — would qualify as “something amazing.” And even lesser characters like Karen and David got flashier send-offs than Season 4’s fatal flu.
Rick’s decision to spare Negan’s life in Season 8’s finale appeared to make enemies of his longtime friends Maggie and Daryl. But, to “show him” how wrongheaded his act of mercy was, would the duo and Jesus really go so far as to bump him off? Not likely. On the other hand…
We can envision a scenario in which Maggie, Daryl and Jesus set out to teach Rick a lesson, only to become the ones to get schooled — in how it doesn’t take a whole helluva lot in their dangerous world for a well-laid plan to go awry, leaving in its wake the corpse of a pal.
Suppose Jon Bernthal’s reappearance as treacherous Shane is less a harbinger of flashbacks to happier times than a sign that our hero’s due to be haunted by a past too harrowing to be remembered. Couldn’t the losses Rick’s suffered, coupled with the atrocities he’s committed, drive him to consider taking his own life?
Season 9’s trailer has already hinted at the difficulties Rick will face integrating the Saviors into a larger community. And it isn’t hard to imagine an acolyte of Negan’s — or, scarier still, a group of them — executing our hero in hopes of getting the villain sprung from prison and restored to power.
Maggie’s hardly the only person who wants to spit on Negan’s grave. If one of the others attempted to assassinate the prisoner, Rick might martyr himself to save him, thereby reinforcing his commitment to Carl’s dying wish for “something after” the war.
Though Rick was willing to give peace a chance by sentencing Glenn and Abraham’s murderer to life behind bars instead of death, the jailbird himself has never been one to let bygones be bygones. So, given any opportunity whatsoever, he’d surely bury Rick rather than the hatchet.
In Kirkman’s comic-book series, Rick isn’t among the ill-fated characters whose reanimated heads are stuck on stakes by Alpha and the Whisperers to mark their territory. But if the TV show again veers from its source material and kills him that way, you have to admit, it would be “something amazing.” Awful and horrific, yes, but definitely “amazing.”