The Walking Dead: The Seven Ages of Rick Grimes



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Warning: contains spoilers for The dead who walk season 9 episode 5.

We did not have any deaths, so there was no funeral. Heavily dragged as "Rick Grimes' last episode," What comes next I felt more like "the last episode of Rick Grimes" at the moment, and also, there might be movies if everything was played out.

It may not have been a definitive end to the character, but it is an emotional goodbye that ends The dead who walkThe very first story: that of a man who seeks to find his family. Rick was saved by the people he saved and realized that his real family was the friends he had created along the way. What happens next is only information from the executive producers of the gods / AMC.

Instead of a eulogy, here's a tribute to Rick Grimes, the man, the hat, the beard, the legend …

Friendly officer

"We do not kill the living"

A neat uniform, a pristine hat, a back and short sides, and barely five o'clock … it was season 1 of Rick Grimes, deputy sheriff of a small town, husband and father. a child. Before the apocalypse, we met Rick as a dedicated officer and natural leader. While his colleagues were joking, he reminded them to stay focused on their work. Then he was shot twice. And fell into a coma that made him miss the end of the world.

Even after the end of the world, the Friendly Officer (a name he gave himself sarcastically) was right and honorable. In Glenn's words, he may have been "a fool" with much to learn about the undead, but he knew instinctively that the truth was wrong. Rick sided with good people, dealt with Merle Dixon, a racist dipshit, kept the peace and told Daryl in clear terms that "we do not kill the living".

Uh, about that …

The Ricktator

"It's not a democracy anymore"

Rick kills the living. The world has not disappeared long before selfishness and violence manifest themselves in the face of decency and kindness. Rick and co. People who meet on the way are populated by cowards and cruel. Two of these people are Dave and Tony, the men Rick and Hershel meet in a second-season bar, who threaten to hunt down the farm and take what they want. Facing the choice between keeping his moral code and protecting his family, Rick chose the latter, and who could blame him? The apocalypse is not the moment of moral absolutism.

During the second season, reluctant leader Rick learned that his head wearing a hat with gold tassels was uncomfortable. His leadership was facing a mutiny from within, while his best friend and partner, Shane, was trying to kill him and take his place. He learned that Lori's baby might not be his, and that he had a hard time making the right choices and doing the hard work. Despite Shane's gung-ho approach to strollers in the barn, it was Rick and not him who put poor Sophie out of her sufferings. Rick gave the blood to save Carl's life and struggled to find out what to do with Randall.

After all this, Rick's season two campfire speech makes perfect sense. These are the words of a man pushed far, far behind his limits. He's mean, he's sarcastic ("Come on, there's the door, send me a postcard, you can do better, let's see where you're going."). He recalls exactly what is ungrateful what he did for them ("I keep this group together, alive, I've been doing it from the beginning.") And finally, he sets the law: "Take one thing in the clear. You stay? It is no longer a democracy.

Captain's Travels

"Everyone is worried about you"

After Lori's traumatic death at the prison, the grief momentarily evacuates Rick. The moment he sees this baby in Maggie's arms and understands what it means, his face freezes in a glare and he loses everything except his rage, becoming a snarling animal. Even Glenn is threatened by this Rick, who throws him against a wall and shakes his arm when he tries to stop him from cutting a furious band through the people of Walker Prison.

(Daryl, Rick's brother, Rick's weapons brother, immediately intervenes to help when it's clear what happened.) As soon as the ground recedes under Rick's feet, Daryl is there to start He gives everyone work to do, goes into the race for infant formula and swears that the future Lil Ass-Kicker, who will be baptized, will succeed, Ah, Daryl.)

After the rage comes instability. Rick does not know what's real and what's imagined. He receives four phone calls, one after the other, in the manner of the ghosts of Scrooge, all from the dead. He pleads with his fantasized interlocutors: "We are good people here, we just need help." That's clear.

Not too far-Rick

"We can still come back"

Rick was not alone in being distressed by grief. The Governor, already a despot with dark appetites, died when Michonne passed his katana in the skull of his daughter Penny. Penny had already been dead for a long time, of course, after falling victim to the Walker plague, but her execution caused her loss again to the governor. This made him even more dangerous and even more inflexible in terms of destruction and revenge.

At that time, and thanks to the departments of Hershel Greene and his gardening metaphors, Rick Grimes was healing. He had healed enough to know that even after so much loss and suffering, there was still a chance for a future. It was a new Rick – neither naive nor bestial, but a Rick who had suffered and had learned, and who desperately wanted humanity to survive. Things and people were not too far away, he said. Everyone could get away from this fight.

Unfortunately the governor did not agree and Hershel paid the price.

Vampi-Rick Rick

"What are you going to do now, sport?"

It took eight episodes for "Not Too Far Gone Rick", who pleaded desperately for peace, to turn into a biting animal in the throat that once unleashed, has never been fully retreaded. In the season four finale, Rick reached his nadir.

Joe, the leader of the biker gang The Claimers, has come to avenge himself for killing one of theirs during a previous escape. His men savagely beat Daryl and promised to kill Rick and rape Michonne and Carl. Without any weapons and without any options, Rick has taken the only way he has left: he has lost all pretense of humanity and has become an animal. Spotting a second, he threw himself at Joe's throat and tore off an artery, then eradicated Carl's rapist with terrible ferocity. The last shot of the scene was Carl, already traumatized, looking at his father as if he did not recognize him.

Rick is the one who said (in his uncensored version, anyway) that the cannibals of Terminus were "fucking with the wrong people". It was the Rick who carried a machete to Gareth on his knees in this church and turned it into mush. He is the blood fool Rick who told Deanna in Alexandria "If you do not fight, you will die" and who executed Pete on his order. This is the Rick in whose eyes Morgan looked without recognizing the man he had met in the pilot a long time ago.

Old man rick

"I'm not afraid of a big owl."

Does this unpleasant injury mean that Carl's dream of seeing his father wake up to Weird Al Yankovic and that a world in peace will never be realized? Or will Jadis's relationship heal Rick and allow him to live this rural idyll?

The old man Rick has a thick, manly beard and severely cut gray hair. He sleeps the sleep of the righteous, wears a robe, walks with a stick and looks forward to a party in his garden. He lives with his family, Michonne, Carl and Judith, and it's a wonderful life.

It was Carl's dream for his father. How much of that could still happen?

A new beginning Rick

"My mercy prevails over my anger."

(Alternate title: Kofi Annan-Rick, due to his leadership role in peacekeeping at the beginning of season 9 as "Secretary-General of the United Nations".) "Whatever happens, he is natural that human nature meets, "said A New Beginning Rick A statement that was not corroborated by the first half of the season during which serious fractures appeared in the relationship between Oceanside, the Saviors, Hilltop , the Kingdom and all the others.

A fresh start Rick's belief in a peaceful future was a lesson learned from Carl. Throughout season eight, we saw Rick capture his reflection in mirrors and think about what he was becoming. At his last moment, he had chosen who he wanted to be: someone whom Carl would be proud to call a father. Despite the efforts of others, A New Beginning Rick remains true to his ideals. "It's for all of us together," he said. "We build, we grow." And even now, he's gone, that's what they'll do.

Farewell Andrew Lincoln, whatever Rick's name you gave us, you did a lot of work.

Read our spoiler-filled review of What Comes After here.

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