Yes, tonight was Andrew Lincoln‘s final episode of “The Walking Dead,“ the TV series, but AMC has revealed tonight, in the wake of Rick Grimes’ final episode of the series, that Lincoln actually will be returning in three upcoming movies, all of which will air on AMC.

So. Yeah. That’s why Rick didn’t actually die tonight.

“The story of Rick will go on in films,” Scott Gimple tells THR. “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.”

Gimple continues, “We don’t want to see people doing the same thing, with the same motivations or people with the same lives; it needs to be differentiated from each other in the types of stories that they’re telling, themes and the tones we’re exploring. A variety of locations is absolutely critical to this. Seeing other parts of the world and making sure that we’re not trying to do the same thing that Michonne, Maggie and Carol and everybody have been doing. We want to tell different stories but in different corners of the world. That’s the exciting thing about it: there is so much possibility with that and so much of this comes from the audience asking questions over these past eight-plus years.”

The first film, which will begin production as early as next year, will explore the story of where Rick is taken (post-9.5) and what he faces in a new corner of the zombie apocalypse.

What do you all think?