Walking Dead season 9 episode 5: Showrunner explains shocking 'six-year time jump' ending
**Spoilers for episode 'What Comes After' ahead**
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Your support makes all the difference.Rick Grimes has officially left The Walking Dead, Andrew Lincoln bowing out as the character (minus three feature-length TV movies) during the episode ”What Comes After”.
While the fandom has largely bees discussing the leading character’s departure, the episode was also notable for jumping ahead in time.
The final scenes see newcomers Magna (Nadia Hilker), Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), Luke (Dan Fogler), Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Kelly (Angel Theory) battling a group of Walkers. The characters – who all come from the comics – are eventually saved by a now grown Judith Grimes.
Showrunner Angela Kang has since confirmed the length of the time between the previous scenes and the newest one.
“We’re calling this a six-year time jump,” she told Entertainment Weekly. ”So Judith [Grimes] is about 4, 4-and-a-half years old when we start the season, and then we jump to a 10-year-old Judith, just like we started with a 10-year old Carl.”
Chief content officer and former showrunner Scott M. Gimple has also spoken about the jump, revealing to The Hollywood Reporter that, going forward, The Walking Dead will be very different.
“When people come back for episode six, they’re in for another new beginning,” he said. ”The way that episode five ended with Little Ass-Kicker being not so little, but still very much an ass kicker… we’ll see these new characters [and how] the world has changed and not only in just the way it will look, but in the relationships of all these characters and the history that has transpired between the end of Rick’s story [in] 905 and the start of 906. A lot of time has passed.”
Rick Grimes’s story may have ended in the main TV series, but Lincoln and Gimple have confirmed that the character will return in an upcoming trilogy of movies. Read further about all the biggest talking points from the new episode here.
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