It seems that Danai Gurira is set to follow in the footsteps of Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan as THR reports that Gurira is set to exit The Walking Dead next season. The actress has played the role of Michonne, the katana-wielding badass, since the third season of the long-running AMC series.
You'd better get the most of your quality Michonne time during the remainder of the ninth season, because although Danai Gurira will be back for the tenth season of The Walking Dead, she won't be around for all of it. The new deal will find the actress appearing in only a handful of episodes which will be interspersed throughout season 10. However, that may not be the last we see of Gurira as THR added that she may wind up in the three Walking Dead movies which are set to star Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes. That hasn't been confirmed just yet so don't take that as a sure thing.
As this will mark the third major cast departure from The Walking Dead in less than two seasons, it will be interesting to see how the show proceeds from this point onwards. When AMC renewed the series for a tenth season earlier this week, it also broke that Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride had scored sizable pay bumps, and that their new contracts would reportedly allow them to "move freely among new projects in The Walking Dead universe." AMC programming president David Madden told THR last November that "We do look at this as a universe where we're trying to expand into as many different places as the show fits. We think this is a franchise that could live across formats. So we want to do it carefully; we want to be strategic; we want to try to do it right. But there is a multi-year plan that could include additional series, digital content and specials." The Walking Dead returns to AMC on February 10th.