Andrew Lincoln is at home in London, sipping tea that his wife has just brought him. It’s the morning after The Walking Dead’s fifth-season finale, when viewers watched him, as ex-sheriff Rick Grimes, come head-to-head against the leadership of Alexandria.
The walled-off community is so wildly unprepared for the inevitable threats of their world that it has actually started driving poor Rick insane.
“You know, I was thinking, ‘How many of you do I have to kill to save your lives?’” Rick growls at the Alexandrians, his face covered in blood (for the second day in a row). Just 24 hours earlier, Rick had confronted Pete, Jessie’s abusive husband, and sparked an all-out brawl in the streets.
Half-crazed, Rick drew a gun on Deanna, Alexandria’s leader, and pointed it wildly at the crowd that had gathered to watch—a move that almost got him exiled for good.
But in last night’s season finale, “Conquer,” Rick emerged triumphant: He put a bullet through Pete’s head and convinced Deanna and the Alexandrians to shut up, listen, and do as he says. “You’re gonna change,” he tells them. Welcome back to the Ricktatorship.
Andrew Lincoln hopped on the phone with The Daily Beast to talk about whether Rick’s feelings for Jessie are real, how Rick is morphing into his old nemesis Shane, and his momentous reunion with Morgan, his oldest post-apocalypse friend.