‘The Ones Who Live’ How ‘The Walking Dead’ Comics Foretold THAT Gory Premiere Moment

[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Ones Who Live Episode 1, “Years.”]

Things really got out of hand for Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) at the CRM, huh? At least he’s all right.

Bad jokes aside, The Ones Who Live made it clear, and quickly, just how hard Rick tried to get back to Michonne (Danai Gurira) and his family and how much he was willing to sacrifice for the faintest hope of seeing them again. What might not be clear to those who haven’t read the source material is that this particular plot had been in the cards for a very, very long time—all the way back to the Governor! Let’s break it down.

Gene Page/AMC

What Happened to Rick?

In the premiere’s opening minutes, we see Rick hack off his left hand as a means of escaping CRM’s custody during a walker-killing exercise. Unfortunately, it all goes sideways when Rick suffers the immediate ill effects of blood loss, even though he cauterized the wound in a burning walker’s chest (gross and gory). He passes out and winds up right back where he started: a CRM prisoner, but this time, without a hand. Poor Rick!

What Happened in the Comics?

Way, way back when the main show was airing, plenty of fans expected Rick to lose a hand because there was source material precedent for it. In the comics, Rick loses his right hand during the Governor storyline when the infamous bad guy cuts it off with a knife. At one point, Lincoln was campaigning for his character to follow the same trajectory on the television show—but because of budget and technology restrictions, Rick kept both of his hands throughout his time on The Walking Dead. Aaron (Ross Marquand), meanwhile, took an extremely modified version of that hand-severing storyline in the show’s ninth season.

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In The Ones Who Live, it seems Lincoln finally got his wish. Since The Ones Who Live is a six-episode limited series, it’s possible that the budget and time restraints that prevented the storyline’s adaptation were no longer an issue. It’s also possible that the writers wanted to show, rather than tell, viewers how much Rick was willing to put himself through in order to see his family again. Whatever the reasoning behind this twist, comics fans can rejoice in the knowledge that source material Rick and television Rick have a missing hand in common.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, Sundays, 9/8c, AMC