AMC has debunked the rumor that The Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln’s (Love Actually) Rick Grimes will not make an appearance in its spin-off series, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, season one finale episode, according to Screen Rant. Rick was the centerpiece of the first nine seasons of the parent television series as it followed him leading a group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse. Lincoln’s character was last seen in the fifth episode of the ninth season of The Walking Dead where he was rescued by a helicopter and disappeared from the show. Currently, Lincoln is anticipated to reappear as his character in a prospective The Walking Dead film. 

Rick was supposedly rescued by the CRM, or the Civic Republic Military, which has become a key plot point in the spin-off series of World Beyond. The Walking Dead: World Beyond centers on teenagers surviving in the zombie apocalypse in middle America and the spin-off series follows the first generation of the post-apocalyptic world as they navigate self-identity crises and other issues that arise in the perilous world they now live in. Due to the inclusion of the CRM, it was assumed that Lincoln would appear in the series due to an IMDb credit for the season finale, but was debunked by AMC and the credit has since been removed from the site, via Insider. 

The spin-off series is created by Scott M. Gimple (Fillmore!, FlashForward) and Matthew Negrete (White Collar, Kim Possible) in addition to being executive produced by Gimple, Negrete, Robert Kirkman (Haunt, Ant-Man), David Alpert (American Ultra), Brian Bockrath (The Walking Dead), and Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Tremors). The series cast features the likes of Aliyah Royale (The Red Line), Nicolas Cantu (The Good Place), Hal Cumpston (Bilched), Alexa Mansour (Unfriended: Dark Web), Nico Tortorella (Younger, The Following), Julia Ormond (Temple Grandin), and Annet Mahendru (The Americans). 

Image Credit: Raymond Flotat