Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln to Continue Playing Rick Grimes in Three Movies for AMC

Andrew Lincoln‘s final episode on The Walking Dead just aired, but you don’t have to say goodbye to Rick Grimes just yet.

The 45-year-old actor will continue playing the beloved character for three feature-length movies that will air on AMC. We won’t spoil you on how Rick exited The Walking Dead, but there is obviously a way for him to continue!

“It’s not the beginning of the end, it’s the end of the beginning,” Andrew said on The Talking Dead after the episode aired. “And I like the idea that we get to tell a bigger story, maybe with a sort of wider vista. And I’ve always been interested in what’s going on out there, you know, whether or not there is contact with the wider world. I want to know the meta of it all. And I suppose to be able to kind of touch upon that in a contained story for me is a very exciting proposition … Maybe it’s the start of a bigger story.”

Production on the movies is expected to begin as early as 2019.

“The story of Rick will go on in films,” The Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple said in a statement. “Right now, we’re working on three but there’s flexibility in that. … Over the next several years, we’re going to be doing specials, new series are quite a possibility, high-quality digital content and then some content that defies description at the moment. We’re going to dig into the past and see old characters. We’re going to introduce new characters and new situations.”