First Look at The Walking Dead’s Deleted Alternate Ending

Warning: this story contains spoilers for The Walking Dead series finale. After 11 seasons, The Walking Dead concluded with the Grimes children looking toward the future. In the ending viewers saw in the “Rest in Peace” series finale, a coda answered why Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) have yet to return home to their children, Judith (Cailey Fleming) and Rick “RJ” Grimes Jr. (Antony Azor). But in a never-before-seen alternate ending, a flash forward would have revealed the next generation of The Walking Dead: the adult children of Rick, Michonne, Aaron (Ross Marquand), Jerry (Cooper Andrews), and Rosita (Christian Serratos). 

Here’s how the original final scene of The Walking Dead played out in the deleted alternate ending, according to Insider: 

After Daryl rode off, we cut forward to the Freedom Parkway, outside Atlanta — where the iconic shot of Rick rode down from the pilot. See an ethanol-modified van, with a young woman and man in the front seats (in their twenties). And through the scene, we come to realize it’s adult RJ and Judith. Other adult versions of the kids are in the back — Coco, Gracie, etc. They’re out there, looking to escort any survivors back to their communities. Continuing the legacy of their parents. As RJ speaks over the radio, he finishes with: “If you can hear me, answer back. This is Rick Grimes.” (Which, of course, is his name — and the line Rick said in the pilot.) Then we end with the voice of a survivor answering back: “…Hello?”

Cinematographer Duane Charles Manwiller shared the first look at theseries finale’s alternate ending on Instagram, revealing a grown-up RickGrimes Jr. (Chicago Med‘s Roland Buck III), Ezra (Cobra Kai‘s Seoum Tylor Aun), Socorro/”Coco” (Walker‘s Sahara Ale), Gracie (The Rookie‘s Tess Cline), and Judith Grimes (GLOW‘s Britt Baron). See it below.

“That was not originally the final moment of the show. I’d written a completely different final scene,” showrunner Angela Kang told Decider of the finale’s last shot of young Judith and RJ. “But it was something that worked well in pitch and that everybody liked, but it was one of those things when we finally saw it all put together we were like, ‘this doesn’t quite work,’ and AMC was like, ‘maybe you just cut this sequence,’ and I was like, ‘I completely understand that.’”

Kang continued: “So then we were kind of like, ‘so do we end with Rick/Michonne? Do we end on Daryl riding off? Do we end on the kids?’ But the intention was always that this is about… Our generation has done all this stuff, and then here’s who’s going to carry on the legacy.”

The legacy of The Walking Dead lives on in three new spin-off shows in the works at AMC. In 2023, the cabler will premiere The Walking Dead: Dead City, following Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) into post-apocalyptic New York City; The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, focused on Daryl (Norman Reedus) stranded overseas in Paris, France; and The Walking Dead: Rick & Michonne, an epic love story reuniting Rick and Michonne.

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