‘The Walking Dead’ Will Lose Danai Gurira After Season 10
In the pages of Image Comics’The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes and Michonne are among the longest-surviving major characters and their war against the zombie apocalypse continues through the latest issues. However, the AMC television adaptation is about to feature a very different line-up. Following Andrew Lincoln’s departure from the show earlier this season,Danai Gurirais set to exit as well.
The news comes to us viaThe Hollywood Reporterand follows the recent announcement thatThe Walking Deadwould return for a tenth season. While the show’s popularity has waned over the past few years, it remains a juggernaut and AMC’s flagship series. And yet, it seems the stars can only take so many years of acting out a miserable existence in the zombie apocalypse.
Season 10 will be Danai Gurira’s last – she will appear in a handful of episodes scattered across the season before exiting. THR speculates that Guriria could join Andrew Lincolnin those plannedWalking Deadfilms, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Introduced in season 3, Guriria’s Michonne instantly became one of the show’s breakout characters. The stoic, samurai sword-wielding badass dispatched zombies with the best of them, acting as one of Rick’s deadliest and most loyal soldiers. Even whenThe Walking Deadbegan to drop in quality (the when of that is something you can debate amongst yourselves), Gurira always gave the role her all – you alwaysbelievedher every decision, even when the writing sent the show in nonsensical directions.
No specific reason was given for Gurira’s pending departure, but it’s easy to speculate why. In addition to her duties onThe Walking Dead, she has spent the past decade honing her skills as a playwright, winning acclaim and awards for her Off-Broadway showIn the Continuumand earning a Tony nomination for penning the Broadway showEclipsed. And then there’s a little movie calledBlack Panther, which proved Gurira could command the screen as a badass action hero, standing alongside the rest of the heroes of the Marvel universe. In other words: she’s got other stuff to do and she’s been onThe Walking Deadfor alooongtime.
With Lincoln and Gurira gone, that seemingly leaves the entire series on the shoulders of Norman Reedus' Daryl Dixon. Reedus, the kind of blue-collar character actor who has never said no to job but also never phones it in, is probably going to ride motorcycles and kill zombies and brood until the day he dies…something for which AMC is undoubtedly thankful.
The second half ofThe Walking Deadseason 9 premieres this Sunday on AMC. Season 10 will most likely arrive later this year.
