Norman Reedus Plans to Stick with ‘The Walking Dead’ Until the End

Daryl Dixon actor Norman Reedus hopes to be the last man standing on The Walking Dead.

“You know, I started on Season One of the show, and I’d love to bookend it,” Reedus told ComicBook.com.

“I put so much effort into this. For me to walk away now would just seem so cowardly. It’s a fight every day, in a million different ways. But it’s a fight that I’ve been invested in. My family’s here, I like my life here. I like riding my motorcycle through the country to work. I’ve been in New York a long, long time, and now every time I go back to New York I just wanna go back to Georgia.”

The bowman was pegged as the last-surviving member of the group in a prediction made by the late Beth Greene (Emily Kinney) in a Season Four episode when she told Daryl, “You’re gonna be the last man standing.”

AMC, who produces and airs The Walking Dead, said recently it’s planning at least another decade plus of the series in multiple formats — and if Reedus’ longtime survivor is ever queued up for his own spinoff or a movie, the series veteran is game.

“I just want to tell honest stories,” he said. “And I think sometimes, this show’s a huge show. The scripts are this long, and you have this many days to shoot them, and it’s work. It’s tough. We shoot scenes on this show in an hour that if you were on a movie would take four days to shoot. You have that luxury on a film … I would like to slow the pace entirely. Don’t rush me; I’d like a tiny script and stretch it out. I think that would be fun and honest. So, yeah, if it was like that.”

Reedus said previously if his loner Daryl ever left the series, it should be without a definitive ending.

“I’d like him to just walk away and just walk away into the woods, and people go, ‘Where the heck is that guy?’” Reedus told ComicBook.com.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, he gets shot.’ ‘Oh, he turns into a zombie.’ ‘They put him down.’ We’ve seen all of that happen so many times. I think with Daryl, because he came in that way, I think he should go out that way. He should just walk away, and people are like, ‘What ever happened to him?’ Nobody knows. He’s like the Outlaw Josey Wales or some sh-t.”

Reedus’ best friend, Rick Grimes actor Andrew Lincoln, will famously make his exit this upcoming front half of Season Nine. And while Reedus and Lincoln had a seasons-old pact to leave together if one of them ever exited the show, Reedus said “hell no” when asked in July if he’ll similarly bow out.

The star has since repeatedly shut down rumors he’ll be taking over for Lincoln once he’s gone, more recently telling press no one will “step up and be Rick” after Lincoln has departed the series.

Once Lincoln has gone, Reedus and co-star Melissa McBride, who plays Carol, will be the last actors to have stayed on with the series since its first season.

The Walking Dead Season Nine debuts Sunday, October 7 on AMC.