Anything can happen in the Walking Dead franchise. That shouldn't come as a surprise to you considering that we are talking about a shared universe in which the dead reanimate as zombies but, even then, the TWD story continues to surprise us. And perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that it's still thriving 16 years after it all began - and four years after the original series came to an end.
Spinoffs Daryl Dixon and Dead City are keeping the TWD Universe flame alight and, with both having new seasons coming this year, those stories will continue for some time to come. Perhaps most exciting of all? The big Walking Dead return we've all been waiting for may well happen this year too, as there is one project fans are expecting to see it take place in.
Why Rick Grimes is now expected to appear in Daryl Dixon season 4
This year will mark the end of another Walking Dead era as The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will conclude with its impending fourth and final season. The spinoff, which stars TWD veterans Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride, sees Daryl and Carol Peletier traverse their way through the undead, unexplored lands of TWD's Europe, with the first two seasons taking them to France and the third taking them to Spain (through England). Now, the final season will look to take them home, back to the US.
Naturally, fans are expecting to see Andrew Lincoln reprise his role as Rick Grimes whenever the pair do get home. After all, Rick has returned home after all these years and Daryl has been unaware due to his time travelling through Europe. Could he be in for the mother of all surprises when he returns home to find his long-lost best friend back in the land of the living? It's not just possible; it's likely at this point.
Lincoln confirmed back in September that he was in discussions to reprise his role as Rick in the TWD Universe. He didn't say when it would happen - or if it would even happen - but his comments did offer fans hope that we hadn't seen the last of the man responsible for the success of The Walking Dead in the first place.
See, the star did make a somewhat recent comeback to the TWD Universe. After a cameo appearance in the series finale of the original series, he and Danai Gurira reprised their roles as Rick and Michonne in their own six-part spinoff series titled The Ones Who Live. It was designed specifically to conclude their love story, wrapping up the biggest loose ends that The Walking Dead could not. And after those six episodes, it did just that - bringing their long-form arc to a close when they returned home to Alexandria to reunite with children Judith and RJ.
There aren't plans for a second season of the spinoff but Lincoln did say after the series finale aired that he would be open to returning again at some point down the line if there was a script he couldn't resist. His more recent comments suggest that he has found that script. And that has naturally led to fans speculating about when or where that return could take place.
Realistically, the most likely option is indeed the Daryl Dixon series finale. While we would all love for it to be that long-awaited, long-rumored Walking Dead crossover spinoff designed to unite the cast and crew of the three offshoots one more time, the final ever episode of Daryl Dixon is simply more feasible at this point in time - particularly as the time that Lincoln made those comments just so happened to be when Daryl Dixon's fourth and final season was filming.
Daryl is Rick's best friend and, during the series finale of The Walking Dead, he told Judith that he would keep an eye out for him on the road when he left Alexandria to scope out new locations. However, Rick has since returned to Alexandria (after he and Michonne destroyed the Civic Republic Military once and for all in The Ones Who Live finale), so it's only natural to expect that he would be there waiting for him when he returned home.
It's unclear if Carol knows about Rick's return. In the first season, she alluded a potential character's comeback when speaking to Daryl on the radio but once she became a regular character in season 2, that story beat was dropped. Fans considered that a major copout for the otherwise brilliant series, so the one way to sidestep that criticism altogether would be for Carol to have known about Rick's comeback all along, simply choosing to withhold that as a surprise for when she and Daryl return home.
Although Norman Reedus has opened up about a desire to surprise the fans by doing what they least expect in the final season of Daryl Dixon, anything other than a reunion between Rick, Daryl, and Carol would be seen as a disappointment. And with Lincoln confirming talks of a comeback around the time that the final season was filming, it's hard to see around the notion of that reunion taking place in the final episode of the spinoff series.
Yes, that means that Rick Grimes could be back on our screens this year. Although AMC has yet to announce an official release date for Daryl Dixon season 4, the series will be back in the fall. And with that, we could be in for a game-changing final season.
Here's hoping that any potential reunion could lead to that Walking Dead sequel series that we've all been waiting to see.
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