You may think that you can quit the zombie life, but it always finds a way to drag you back in. Earlier this year it was revealed that Andrew Lincoln, who has played Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead since the very beginning, would be departing the AMC series mid-way through the upcoming ninth season. However, it seems that he won't be leaving the series behind altogether as he told Entertainment Weekly that he's planning on returning for the tenth season…as a director.
Andrew Lincoln has said that he chose to leave The Walking Dead because he lives in a different country and has two young children. "It was that simple," Lincoln said. "It was time for me to come home." However, he'll be returning to the set of The Walking Dead quite soon in order to properly prepare to helm his own episode of the series.
I’m going back. I’m going back to shadow a director, and my intention is to direct next year.
Andrew Lincoln won't be the first Walking Dead actor to step behind the camera, as Colman Domingo, who plays Strand on Fear the Walking Dead, recently helmed an episode of that series and Michael Cudlitz, who played Abraham on The Walking Dead, returned to direct the seventh episode of the upcoming season of The Walking Dead. Although Rick Grimes' story will soon be coming to an end one way or another, it seems that Andrew Lincoln might just miss his old cast and crew. "I can’t be that far away because I can’t bear it," laughs Lincoln. "That’s how much I am invested in the show and the continuation of the story."
The official synopsis for the ninth season of The Walking Dead:
Now, viewers will see the survivors a year and a half after the end of the war, rebuilding civilization under Rick’s steadfast leadership. It is a time of relative peace among the communities as they work together, looking to the past to forge the future, but the world they knew is rapidly changing as man-made structures continue to degrade, and nature takes over, changing the landscape and creating new challenges for our survivors. As time passes, the communities confront unexpected obstacles, danger, and of course, walkers, but nothing quite prepares them for the formidable force they are about to encounter, which threatens the very idea of civilization that our survivors have worked so hard to build.
The Walking Dead will return to AMC on October 7, 2018.