Sunday night’s episode of The Walking Dead ended with a cliffhanger. Spoilers follow.
After his fight with Daryl, Rick rides bravely forth to draw off the oncoming herd of walkers away from the bridge camp where Carol and the others are locked in a pitched battle with the Saviors.
Alas, he ran headlong into a second herd, his horse panicked and threw him from its back, and he landed on a piece of rebar where, when the credits rolled, he remained stuck and bleeding as the zombies approached.
Now the question is, what will happen to Rick? Andrew Lincoln is officially leaving the show, but we still don’t know the fate of his character. And while things are looking incredibly grim, there’s reason to believe he doesn’t die there—and perhaps, doesn’t die at all.
Read my review of Sunday night’s episode here.
Let’s take a look at five different theories about the fate of Rick Grimes, a fate that we’ll discover next week.
1. He’s hallucinating everything and dies on the rebar.
As I noted yesterday, AMC made yet another weird marketing decision by showing us a promo of next week’s episode directly after we were left with the jarring cliffhanger. The promo is filled with Rick doing stuff other than being eaten by a descending zombie mob. This is not only a big spoiler, it makes it pretty obvious that Rick escapes his skewering.
Or does he?
Between the promo (watch below) and the Comic Con trailer (also below) there’s some hints that he could actually be hallucinating everything. Look at the evidence:
- In the Comic Con trailer we see Rick at the bridge, apparently wounded and out of it, and we see a bunch of people running toward him (see the above image.) The thing is, if you watch the scene carefully from 3:27 to 3:30 it looks like they’re not running toward him at all, but rather past him. Almost like he’s not actually there—or they’re not actually there.
- We know that multiple dead characters are making cameos next week including Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Hershel (Scott Wilson, RIP) which could indicate that Rick is having flashbacks in his fever dream state.
- The Episode 5 promo includes shots of Atlanta and other pieces from Rick’s past, suggesting that at the very least, even if Rick does get off the rebar and escapes, he’s still hallucinating and on death’s doorstep.
- The promo also includes an iconic shot from the comics, of Rick standing in fields of the dead. A pretty hallucinatory image if ever there was one.
So this is all pretty convincing stuff, though it doesn’t exactly spell out Rick’s fate one way or another as he could be hallucinating while riding his horse or while stuck on the rebar.
2. Jadis and the helicopter rescue/capture Rick.
Jadis decided not to trade (or kill?) Gabriel to the mysterious helicopter people, but that doesn’t mean she’s given up on the idea of trading someone to them. Again, in the Comic Con trailer we see her looking up at a helicopter while holding a radio, and this takes place directly after the bridge scene I mentioned in #1. Check it out:
I think this takes place in Episode 5, given this very similar photo AMC released for the upcoming episode:
As you can see, she’s in the same shirt holding the same radio and by the same trees. This means the helicopter will almost certainly show up in Episode 5. The question is, what will it do? Jadis doesn’t have an “A” to give them, unless somehow she’s stumbled upon Rick.
It’s possible that she and the helicopter people will rescue Rick and then take him prisoner in order to conduct weird experiments on him. The only problem with this theory is that if Rick is captured, why would he no longer be on the show? Wouldn’t that story be interesting?
3. One of the herds is actually Whisperers who take Rick captive.
I’m not sure that an entire herd of walkers could be Whisperers—villains yet to be introduced to the show, but who we know are coming in Season 9, who wear zombie skins—but it’s possible some Whisperers are in the mix. Could they somehow save Rick and take him with them? Rescuing him but also putting him a whole new kind of grave danger?
This seems pretty unlikely to me, especially given what we’ve seen of Episode 5. On the other hand, we know that the Whisperers are coming. We also know other groups of survivors will show up soon (Magna, et alia) so there’s lots of wiggle room.
4. Rick escapes and leads the herds to the bridge and their doom, saving everyone in a moment of sacrifice.
Perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but it would be nice to see Rick go out in a blaze of glory, taking out the zombie herds by leading them across the bridge or doing some other valiant act to save his friends and family. I really don’t want him to die alone on a piece of rebar in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want him to die or get captured and just leave Michonne and Judith and everyone else not actually knowing what became of him.
I guess it just strikes me as incredibly unlikely that Rick will go out so badly. There has to be something more in store for him.
5. It’s all a massive head-fake.
Okay, so final theory: Rick is impaled on the rebar but somehow manages to get off of it and hides under a dumpster. We don’t see him for a few more episodes but then he miraculously shows up, alive and well. Surprise!
I’m joking but I’m also not joking, because this type of dirty trick is something the show is quite familiar with. Scott Gimple is one of the writers of next week’s episode, so anything is possible. A Glenn-style fake-out would be infuriating, but also I bet a lot of fans would be relieved at the same time.
It seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Also, while Andrew Lincoln has announced his departure from the show, he also said: “My relationship with this part is far from over. I’m not going to say any more than that, but I would just say watch this season.”
This certainly opens the door to lots of different survival possibilities, though I remain unconvinced that he can at once survive and have that happen in a way that makes sense for the future of the show, unless it is a huge fake-out.
In any case, you can watch both trailers below. Be sure to hit me up on Twitter or Facebook with any other theories/thoughts/questions you may have and if there are any really good ones that I missed I’ll add them to the post. Thanks for reading!
Episode 5 Promo:
Comic-Con Trailer:
