The Walking Dead Comic Kills Off Major Character (SPOILERS)

Warning: Spoilers follow for issue #192 of The Walking Dead.

There is a major development in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic, which has offed a very long-time character. As Uproxx reports the Image Comics series did the previously-unthinkable by killing off Rick Grimes.

Issue #191, which was released last month, Rick was shot in the chest by Sebastian Milton, the son of the current governor of the Commonwealth where the Alexandria survivors currently are. Rick and the Alexandrians had made enemies of Governor Samantha Milton over the Commonwealth’s classist system, and the governor was imprisoned with new elections planned. That let to Sebastian firing the shot that hit Rick, leaving a cliffhanger.

Issue #192 saw Sebastian shoot Rick several more times and die. Carl arrived to find Rick as a zombie and had to shoot him in the head, putting him down. Robert Kirkman said in the Letter Hacks section of the comic (per CBR that he knew Rick would die in this situation “for almost a decade.”

“”I’ve been working toward this since I started writing… issue #1,” Kirkman wrote. “It doesn’t make it any easier, but it’s been something I’ve been getting more and more used to as the years got down to months and then weeks… I knew it was coming.”

He added, “Even before we introduced Sebastian Milton (in issue #177) I knew he was the one who would kill Rick Grimes. For almost a decade now I knew Rick would choose to preserve the Commonwealth no matter the cost… and it would cost him his life. I’ve said in interviews for many, many years, that everyone dies in this story, and that even Rick Grimes won’t survive until the end,” he added. “While this was always Rick’s story thus far, as written about in the first issue, that doesn’t mean he needs to be alive to be a presence in the series. This is the story of a world, not a man… it’s the story of a world profoundly affected by that man, as we’ll see starting next issue… but it isn’t exclusively Rick’s story.”

Obviously, this will not necessarily affect the television series, where Rick has been written out of the show (but is starring in his own film series on AMC). However, there is the possibility that Rick’s films will take him to the Commonwealth, where he could conceivably meet the same fate. 411’s Steve Gustafsson gave the new issue a 9/10 in his review for this week’s Comic Review Roundtable.