‘The Walking Dead’ Producer Explains Why Rick Survived Last Episode

The choice to preserve Rick Grimes‘ life following his last episode of The Walking Dead was one aiming to do justice for the character while also preserving possibilities for the character’s future.

Spoilers for The Walking Dead Episode 9×05 follow. Major spoilers!

The Walking Dead executive producer and director of Episode 9×05, Greg Nicotero, sat down with ComicBook.com on After the Dead to break down the episode and the creative decision behind each beat. “How do you kill Rick Grimes? You know?” Nicotero started. “I’m getting emails already going, ‘Wait! He didn’t die?!’ I’m like, ‘Guys, sorry!’”

The live recap show followed The Walking Dead immediately after Episode 9×05 had been broadcast on AMC from Nicotero’s Nic & Norman’s restaurant just off of the Alexandria set in Senoia, Georgia. Surrounded by fans of the show who attended a screening of the episode and the live taping of After the Dead, Nicotero went into further detail. In other words, Rick’s survival via Jadis and her mysterious helicopter destination was as fresh as his rebar wound.

“It was one of those things where, Andy’s decision to leave the show was so much personal and not about the show or the content,” Nicotero explained. “And this season Angela [Kang] really has done an amazing job of sort of crafting these stories that really sort of grounded the show back the way the show played in season two, season three, and everybody really loved it. You know?”

In fact, everybody loved it including Rick actor Andrew Lincoln. “We felt like we were all sort of getting our groove back and Andy was like, ‘Man this is the show I wanna be making…And now I gotta go,’” Nicotero chuckled. “And I’m like, “Well do you?’” Then came the decision to preserve Rick’s life and shift him over to AMC Studios movies.

“Honestly, those conversations obviously started a long time ago and I think for us we really were just focusing on trying to tell the best story that we could, and Andy was in it,” Nicotero said. “Every episode that I’ve ever directed, the script comes in and Andy comes over and we read the script together, and we go through it and he plays himself and I read all the other parts. So I’m a great Maggie by the way, if anyone was wondering.

“So in this particular episode, we really wanted to make sure that we fine-tuned the story so that it gave us an episode that really respected the fan and respected the show. So many callbacks.”

The episode on Sunday night certainly featured an abundance of callbacks. In fact, Nicotero had his team sift through old unused footage from the show’s first and second seasons to pull up location shots from Rick’s initial gun shot injury, riding his horse through Atlanta streets, and Hershel’s farm.

“This was a massive group effort and the funniest thing is, aside from the field of the dead, when you see Rick going through Atlanta, there’s a shot of the horse coming around the bus, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I remember when we shot the pilot,’” Nicotero said. “We pulled the dailies from the pilot, and we found like one section of about eight seconds after they had said ‘Cut,’ before they turned the camera off and we took that frame, and then we put Andy into it.”

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET. Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter and watch ComicBook.com’s After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes.