The Walking Dead: World Beyond – Don’t expect to see Rick Grimes

Rick Grimes will not appear in The Walking Dead: World Beyond at any time soon

In a recent interview, Scott M. Gimple clarified whether or not Rick Grimes will ever show up on an episode of The Walking Dead: World Beyond and he didn’t mince words in his response. Some fans believed that Rick would make an appearance on the show given that he is being held by the CRM, and a recent IMDB snafu only served to add to the confusion, but Gimple says that Rick isn’t coming to World Beyond.

When World Beyond was first announced it was billed as an exploration of another side of the TWD Universe, told from the perspective of a group of teens who grew up in the apocalypse. When the Civic Republic Military, the mysterious entity with the black helicopters flying, was tied to the show there was speculation that there could be connections to what happened to Rick Grimes.

That much is true: World Beyond, and the stories about the CRM, absolutely paint a picture of what could have happened to Rick Grimes.

However, some fans have been frustrated that Rick hasn’t shown up on the show “yet” and TWD Chief Creative Officer Scott M. Gimple told ComicBook’s Brandon Davis that the expectation that Rick will show up is simply baseless:

"ComicBook: I have to ask you, is that place Rick Grimes?Scott M. Gimple: You know what? I’m very happy to say… I’m not happy to say the answer. I’m happy to be definitive with people. It is not.That’s one, I don’t know if people are being cagey about that. But I feel that one’s important not to be cagey about. I think people could watch this show and learn a lot about the mythology that Rick Grimes is caught up in. And they might even see places where Rick Grimes has been. But yeah, he’s not swinging around the corner. And I don’t even know if I’m making people upset saying that, but I just don’t like people watching it, sort of expecting Rick.CB: Yeah, to set the right expectation, that’s smart. I think that’s a good move.SG: But people will learn a lot about the world that Rick is entangled in. So I think there is a great benefit to that."

World Beyond had established that the people labeled “A” don’t end up in a good place. These people – based on what we have seen – are being used as test subjects. When Rick and Anne were evacuated, Anne told the CRM soldier that she had a “B” and we have to think that the B group fares better than the A group, otherwise she would have let him die.

Fans hoping to learn more about Rick can learn all kinds of information about his possible whereabouts from World Beyond. We’ve already learned that CRM is the biggest community in the TWD Universe at this point, they have more resources than anyone else and they’re willing to kill thousands of people to protect themselves. That means Michonne is going to face an uphill battle if she arrives in New York to rescue Rick.

While everyone wants to see what happened to Rick, and whether Michonne ends up finding him, those stories are not going to play out in World Beyond. World Beyond is set to be a two-season limited series, though it’s possible that it could expand if the story calls for it, as Gimple notes.

The truth is that everything is up in the air right now. The pandemic shook up schedules and plans and everyone is trying to figure out how to make sense of it all, so the only information that matters at this point is what is announced at this point and moving forward.

That means that Rick Grimes won’t be making an appearance in The Walking Dead: World Beyond, but the show will help paint a picture of where he might have been and is interesting in itself.