The Shocking Way Josh McDermitt Wants Rick To Return To The Walking Dead

Look, we all want Rick back. It's been three years since he left "The Walking Dead" trailing vague promises about his eventual big screen return behind his helicopter on the way out. Since then, fans have seen neither hide nor hair of the acclaimed slayer of shambling corpses and subject of untold legions of picture-perfect dad joke memes.

Three years is a lot of time, and it's given viewers plenty of room to mull over the potential ways that Andrew Lincoln's character could make his voyage back to the AMC series. It's hard to imagine a Grimes return that would do the lawman justice, short of a pterodactyl ride set to "The Ace of Spades" by Motorhead. Yet somehow, a near-perfect answer for how to bring Rick back came from that least likely of sources: Josh McDermitt, better known as the actor behind Eugene Porter on the series. His best case scenario for a Rick-turn, according to a recent interview with Insider, involves one secret ingredient: Rick choking Eugene out.

Step one, according to McDermitt, would be for Rick to address the elephant in the room. "Maybe Rick comes back, says, 'What's up with your hair? and take scissors to (Eugene's braid)," the actor prognosticated on the subject of Rick's return. "Daryl punches Rick (and says) 'Hey, you owe child support.' Then, Eugene's like, 'No, he just cut my hair, let me get a piece of that.'"

So far so violent, but then comes the twist: "Then Rick chokes (Eugene) out," McDermitt continued."That is honestly the one thing I wish I had on the show, getting choked out by Andrew Lincoln ... I've watched him do it. I've watched him kill several people on the show, in different scenes by choking them ... I just go, 'Man, that looks like fun.' To get choked out by Andrew Lincoln would be pretty incredible." To dream so big is a luxury few can afford, but there you have it. Some people go to work every morning hoping that today will be the day that they're killed by a cast member of "Penguin Bloom."

"The Walking Dead" returns on August 22 for its eleventh and final season on AMC and AMC+.