Bidding farewell to Rick Grimes on ‘The Walking Dead’

Andrew Lincoln’s cop character Rick Grimes opened “The Walking Dead” in 2010, and he has remained the focal leader entering nine seasons.

Rick’s now grayer and more grizzled. He’s made his fair share of smart and stupid decisions. He’s killed hundreds of walkers. He’s dispensed with his fair share of bad dudes. He’s seen most of his original crew die, including his wife and his son. On the bright side, he and Michonne hooked up.

But Lincoln, a British actor, wanted to spend more time in his home country rather than nine months out of the year in metro Atlanta. So the producers have had no choice but to write Rick out of the show.

Much to AMC’s chagrin, the news leaked out months ago. But with the show’s ratings falling rapidly, AMC decided to just promote the guts out of his pending departure.

The only thing we don’t know at this point is exactly how Rick departs. At the end of last Sunday’s episode, he was thrown off his horse and landed on a spike while two converging hordes of walkers closed in.

For nostalgia’s sake, here are five crazy moments from Rick’s time in the apocalypse:

1. Bye-bye, Shane (Season 2): Rick finds out his former best friend Shane is trying to kill him. Rick makes like he is trying to calm the situation and hands over his gun to Shane, then surprise! He guts Shane with his knife. “You did this to us!” Rick screamed as his friend bleeds out.

2. Shooting Sophia (Season 2): Rick’s crew finds out Sophia, who had been missing all season, is a walker in the barn. As walker Sophia ambles out and her mom

Carol cries out in pain, Rick is the one who has to shoot the girl/zombie.

3. Going vampire (Season 4): The Claimers capture Rick and as one of the dudes is about to rape his son Carl, Rick brutally bites Joe’s neck, ripping out his carotid artery, killing him instantly and stunning everyone with his utter brutality.

4. Insane church death (Season 5): Rick could have ambushed the Terminus cannibals when they entered Father Gabriel’s church. Leader Gareth asks why he didn’t do that. Rick utters, “We didn’t want to waste the bullets.” Instead, he hacks Gareth to death with a machete. That’s going to leave a stain.

5. Saving Negan (Season 8): After slitting Negan’s throat, Rick could have easily ended his nemesis’s life permanently. But thinking of Carl, he decides to spare Negan and stick him in a prison cell instead. Maggie? Glenn’s widow is not pleased.

CONTRIBUTED BY AMC Things didn’t look good for Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) entering Lincoln’s final episode of “The Walking Dead,” which will air Sunday.

CONTRIBUTED BY AMC What will happen to an injured Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) as Lincoln exits “The Walking Dead” with this Sunday’s episode?