This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

Summary

Rick Grimes finally severs his own hand in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, embracing a dark moment from the comic series.
Andrew Lincoln pushed for this iconic moment, emphasizing the importance of connecting back to the original material in the AMC series.
Despite concerns from creator Robert Kirkman about future storylines, showrunner Scott M. Gimple is committed to working through any challenges that arise.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live arrived on AMC on Sunday, and brought with it a long-missing Rick Grimes comic book moment that fans believed they would never see play out on screen. The Walking Dead has both stuck close to Robert Kirkman’s original story and occasionally veered wildly from it, and that means there are still some iconic moments from the comics that have not made it into the AMC series – and one of those long-lost scenes was finally delivered with all the brutality it deserved in the new spin-off.

The Ones Who Live has been a long time coming, but the return of Andrew Lincoln as Rick was well worth the wait for fans of the original comic series, who were treated to – if that is the right word – the former franchise lead being reintroduced in a stark and dire predicament that allowed one of the comic’s darker moments to slip into the story; Rick severing his own hand.

This turn of events is instigated by Rick’s enslavement within a CRM facility, and his desperate desire to break free and find his way back to the people he loves. It seems that this moment has been toyed with before, but as showrunner Scott M. Gimple explained to Bam! Smack! Pow!, in the end, its inclusion was all down to Lincoln. He said:

“I had played with it in different ways and different possibilities on the show, and then Angela got to do it with Aaron. And then in some of the development of the Rick stuff, I was thinking of it. But really, I think the gentleman who really put it forward was Mr. Andrew Lincoln. I believe that he was the one that pushed for it in our story because it really goes with our story. What would stop Rick Grimes or at least slow him incredibly from trying to get home?
And seeing just how far he’d go. I mean, it really does speak to the story we’re telling, and that he did in many ways injure himself permanently, both physically and mentally, spiritually, with what he went through in trying to get home; and at a point, giving up.”

Andrew Lincoln Pushed For Rick to Make His Sacrifice
AMC

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lincoln confirmed this to be true, noting that many discussions had been had, but in the end it was something that needed to happen to link back to the source material. He said:

“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. We had to explain why Rick had never returned. This is a guy that would do anything to return, so what is the most extraordinary act or effort that he would put himself through in order to try and get back to his beloved?”

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Rick’s harrowing experience and the loss of his hand are not just physical challenges, but once again remind people of the world in which The Walking Dead takes place is full of impossible choices. Rick’s decision to cut off his own hand, however, is one moment that creator Robert Kirkman previously said he wished he had not done, as it caused future stories to be written around the injury. For Gimple, that is not a concern he has, and noted that the series will just need to make a “commitment to figuring it out, whatever problems might come of it.” He added:

I think it was important as a comic reader to see it, because it helped set the tone of what this world is that these crazy things can happen.

The debut episode of
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
is available to stream on AMC+. New episodes are released every Sunday on AMC.