Andrew Lincoln Talks ‘Walking Dead’: Rick Grimes Is Back [Spoilers]
Anyone keeping up with The Walking Dead can assure you that the show loves to keep people “in a great deal of pain,” and Season 5 is no exception.
One of the key elements throughout has always been Andrew Lincoln and his character, former sheriff Rick Grimes. Poor Rick has endured quite a bit in his constant struggle to keep his rag-tag group of survivors together through the legion of dead zombies. Now the fallen leader is making a comeback.
Lincoln Admits that in the last few seasons, Rick has been off his game. After losing his wife to a zombie attack, Grimes lost his resolve and went a little crazy for a while. This put the burden of leadership onto the backs of others like Glen and Darryl and allowed the more subdued characters of The Walking Dead to come increasingly into focus.
“I said it before: I don’t think it’s an ensemble anymore — it’s a show of leading actors.”
One of the main reasons Grimes has had such a rough time is due to his attempts to find a moral high ground and keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Ironically, these attempts have generally resulted in even more death. This was most highlighted when Rick Grimes tried to reason with the Governor for the safety of the captive Hershel, the grandfatherly sage of the group in Season 4. The Governor answered Ricks plea for reason by removing Hershel’s head off with a sword.
Season 5 saw that turn around as Grimes found himself back at the center of The Walking Dead. As Lincoln himself is eager to point out, Rick Grimes had played it safe long enough and was willing to make the tough calls but, unfortunately, he lost some credibility and nobody would listen to him.
Because of this, events have turned out quite bad, as they’re wont to do on The Walking Dead. Lincoln describes Grimes as a man who, for the first time in the show’s history, is making all of the right decision and no one’s listening to him.
“It’s Bulls–t!” Lincoln says jokingly.
But this brings us to a good point.
Lincoln had quite a lot to say on the subject when talking to Entertainment Weekly. Among other things, he said in the interview that things on The Walking Dead were going to get really crazy.
“I’m really, really half terrified, half so excited to see how people view the way the story goes. I mean it’s completely uncompromising and it’s almost like there’s a mini pilot episode in the middle of the season and it’s nuts, its f— nuts.”
Up until now, Lincoln’s character on The Walking Dead has been fairly democratic in his leadership, but how much longer can he allow this to go on? He wanted to kill everyone at Terminus and nobody listened, then Bob got his leg eaten by cannibals. Rick wanted to take a strike force into the hospital where Beth was held captive and kill everyone there, but the group decided to take hostages and negotiate, which ultimately resulted in Beth getting shot in the head.
“We’re really in trouble when you meet us again and you see almost a soldier pushing his troops on. We’re in dire straits and it’s a man very much back in leader mode. “
Lincoln describes Grimes as “taking the reins” of the group. Now that everything has fallen apart, yet again, and a core member of the group is dead, again, there’s only one person left who is keeping it together and seeing what needs to be done. According to Lincoln, that person is Rick Grimes.
“There are a lot of people grieving the loss of such an important person. There was so much hope invested in Beth and finding her, and then to have it ripped out of our grasp was unbearable for actors and for the story.”
You can see how Rick pulls things together on the Sunday night mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead. You can watch the trailer again below.
