The Walking Dead Fan Art Imagines The Rock as Mercer

Over the past couple of years, The Walking Dead has lost some of its biggest stars. Andrew Lincoln, Lauren Cohan, Steven Yeun, Chandler Riggs, Sonequa Martin-Green, and many others have been written off of the show in recent seasons. Current star and Marvel Studios breakout Danai Gurira is planning to leave this upcoming season. The Walking Dead has been a rotating door of actors as of late, and now fans are looking to the one and only Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to fill in one of the open roster spots.

With The Walking Dead potentially adapting the Commonwealth storyline for TV sometime in the future, there’s an idea floating around that The Rock could take on the role of Mercer, a character from the comics that has become pretty popular since his debut. Well, artist BossLogic took the idea and ran with it, creating a live-action version of Mercer played by Johnson, and it was shared by the official Walking Dead account.

“Wow, [BossLogic] delivered,” reads the tweet. “Here’s what it would look like if [The Rock] played [The Walking Dead] comic character Mercer! (And no, we haven’t cast him, just a fun what if.)”

Johnson would obviously be a massive get for The Walking Dead, seeing as how he’s perhaps the biggest star on the planet. So why imagine him as the popular comic book character? Well, believe it or not, it all started with a review of Johnson’s new movie, Hobbs & Shaw.

The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman tweeted out his love for Hobbs & Shaw last week, which prompted Johnson to respond with a joke about a crossover.

“When the creator of Walking Dead loves [Hobbs & Shaw],” he wrote. “I smell our universes colliding on screen…”

Kirk responded with a simple, “Just say when!”

This exchange prompted a fan to suggest that Johnson should plat Mercer, the head of security for The Commonwealth that gets introduced towards the end of the The Walking Dead‘s run. The official Walking Dead account then replied to the fan-casting by tagging BossLogic, prompting him to create the piece.

Twitter can be a strange place, full of angry trolls and nonsensical discourse. It can be downright terrible. But sometimes, it can actually be pretty awesome. This is definitely one of those times.

Who knows? Maybe this will turn into the biggest guest star The Walking Dead has ever had.

Would you like to see The Rock play Mercer on The Walking Dead? Let us know in the comments!

The Walking Dead returns to AMC on Sunday, October 6th.