Rick Grimes' Fate Is Now One Big Question Mark After The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 18

One of the biggest lingering questions surrounding the final season of "The Walking Dead" is whether or not the show will finally give fans some closure about the fate of former series lead Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), who served as the driving force behind the entire series until his disappearance halfway through Season 9.

During the Season 9 episode "What Comes After," Rick appears to die in a fiery explosion and is mourned by the remaining survivors — though it's later revealed that Rick actually survived the blast and was airlifted away in a helicopter alongside Jadis Stokes (Pollyanna McIntosh). To this day, we still haven't gotten any concrete answers about Rick's whereabouts or his ultimate fate within the series, though we have gotten a few hints about what happened following his miraculous escape in the helicopter.

Season 10 saw Michonne (Danai Gurira) venturing off to find Rick after discovering his belongings on a remote island, and the finale of "The Walking Dead: World Beyond" revealed that Jadis had actually betrayed Rick and sold him to the Civic Republic Military. Although it certainly seems like the show and its various spinoff series are slowly building up to the true end of Rick's story, one particular scene from Season 11 Episode 18 has turned Rick's fate into one big question mark.

At the end of Season 11, Episode 8, titled "A New Deal," Sebastian Milton (Teo Rapp-Olsson) is killed by a walker while the rest of the Commonwealth looks on in apathy, nobody even raising a finger to save him. Although Sebastian's death may not seem like an extremely pivotal moment within the series, it actually marks a drastic departure from "The Walking Dead" comic series — as Sebastian is actually the one who kills Rick Grimes within the comics.

Comic book fans will remember the shocking twist at the end of "The Walking Dead #191," in which Sebastian murders Rick in his own bedroom — with the former fearing that Rick would supplant him as the true leader of the Commonwealth. Although it's no secret that "The Walking Dead" television series has made drastic changes to the story from its comic book source material (to the point where the two storylines are hardly even comparable at this point), Sebastian's death makes it clear that he will have absolutely nothing to do with Rick's fate in the television show – and as such there's no telling what will happen to Rick when he does finally return.

Indeed, it was announced earlier this year that both Rick and Michonne would be returning in an upcoming six-episode miniseries, one which will presumably conclude both of their respective storylines. By removing Sebastian from the equation, there's absolutely no way of predicting how Rick's story will end, and as such, we'll just have to wait and see what happens during this highly-anticipated spinoff series.