100 Percent Totally Serious Predictions About How Rick and Maggie Will Die on The Walking Dead

By this point, we all know Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) will be leaving The Walking Dead in Season 9. They're the show's first and third-billed actors, and their exits will have major consequences for the series going forward and will surely be must-see events in and of themselves. What we don't know is how their exits will happen. I have some predictions, though, and one of them is almost certainly correct, because these are really good, serious, thoughtful predictions.

Windmill decapitation. Season 9 will jump forward in time enough that the Hilltop will have built some of the medieval infrastructure seen in Georgie's (Jayne Atkinson) book. One of those things is a windmill. A rule of The Walking Dead is that if there's a structure, someone will die in/on/around/under it. So what if some group attacks and conquers the Hilltop and to make a point they decapitate the group's leaders with their own Dutch power plant? What if the blades of the windmill are actual blades? That would be sick, dude.

They go looking for Heath. Heath (Corey Hawkins) got separated from Tara (Alanna Masterson) while they were on a scavenging run in Season 7. He was never seen or mentioned again. But as far as we know, he's still out there. Maybe Rick and Maggie will realize he's missing and decide they should go look for him, at which point they, too, will vanish into the ether. Heath's story is the Bermuda triangle of The Walking Dead.

Everything We Know About The Walking Dead Season 9

Maggie goes out like Don Vito. There was a scene in the Season 8 finale where Maggie was plotting with Jesus (Tom Payne) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) about rebelling against Rick over his decision to keep Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) alive. In that scene, Maggie was behind a desk in a dark and shadowy room in a shot that was meant to feel like the scene when wedding guests are visiting Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) at the beginning of The Godfather, the thing other than a Walking Dead rerun you're likely to see if you turn on AMC at any given time. Showrunner Scott Gimple even called her "Maggie Corleone." So if they want to take the Vito Corleone comparison to its endpoint, they'll have her playing in the Hilltop's garden with her child -- who's been born, finally, thanks to the time jump -- when she drops dead. And it'll turn out she was suffering from the same brain-eating amoeba that afflicts Scott Gimple. (JK, Gimple's a good dude. That's a joke for the Redditors.)

Zombie Shane eats Rick. We all assume that Rick's late bestie turned nemesis Shane (Jon Bernthal) is coming back in a flashback or a hallucination. But what if he actually comes back? What if Rick didn't adequately put him down? Or what if, like Nicolas Cage in Drive Angry, he really did die but was so pissed off about being dead that he resurrected himself and he's been wandering the American South for years, looking to get revenge on the man who killed him? It would be so out-of-place that they wouldn't be able to do the show anymore after, but f--- it. It's time to end it, and this would end it in style.

Something predictable and pointless. Rick and Maggie spend half the season fighting. Then at the last minute, in the heat of battle, they realize they're on the same side and sacrifice themselves for the greater good, probably while saving some peripheral character. Rick and Maggie died so Negan's ex-wives could live! Or Rick dies protecting Negan from Maggie, then Maggie realizes she was wrong and pushes Negan out of the way as the dumpster she rigged to fall on him plummets to Earth.

Damn, what good ideas. I should write for The Walking Dead's tenth and final season, and then the spin-offs The Walking Daryl and Better Curl Merle.

The Walking Dead Season 9 will premiere this fall on AMC.