The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live star Andrew Lincoln speaks on the premiere episode’s surprise development [SPOILERS]

WARNING! THE ARTICLE BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE EPISODE “YEARS” FROM THE WALKING DEAD: THE ONES WHO LIVE.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live has premiered with popular series stars Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira returning. Gurira co-created the mini-series and is also one of the writers on the show. Consisting of six episodes, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live will present an “epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead… And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they’ve ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?“

In the season premiere of this new incarnation of the series, Rick Grimes is shown “working for the Civic Republic Military on a job to clear out walkers on fire. The captive Rick was tethered by his wrist to a soldier so he could not escape.” In a stunning development, Grimes would shock the viewers by chopping off his hand in order to break free from his binding. This element would actually come from the comic book source material (except it would not be self-inflicted), and according to Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Scott M. Gimple revealed that Lincoln, who plays Grimes, is the one who wanted the new series to include this plot point. Gimple says to EW, “I played around with the idea but didn’t commit to it through all sorts of iterations of the story. But it was Andy that pushed it. Andy was the one to bring it across the goal line.”

Lincoln had initially pushed to have this happen way back in the original Walking Dead when the comics originally had this act taking place. Lincoln explained, “I just bullied everybody into submission. And there were quite a lot of conversations, particularly with AMC, with people going, ‘Now Andy, we love the idea, but are you really sure about this?’ But I just thought: This is the time to do what the comic book did and honor that. I’ve been trying to pitch this for years, and everybody was just shouting me down.”