Ehh, Rick was kidnapped in season 9. I feel like the peak of the show (in terms of quality and viewership) and the fandom (in terms of the show consistently being in the pop culture conversation) was around season 6. Things started to peter off after that, especially because the quality of the show took a massive dip with seasons 7 and 8.

The show was still popular during season 9, but the numbers weren’t nearly as high as the show at its peak. And general perception of the show was already tainted from the previous two seasons, even if season 9 (debatably) rebounded in terms of quality. So any talk of making a movie around this time was already way too late in my opinion.

This show probably won’t even air until next year, so the fact that there‘ll be 6 years in between when the spin-off movies were first announced, to when we’ll finally see Rick again, probably doesn’t help either. This is well, well, well beyond the point where the story could have made the biggest impact. And I feel the same about all the other spin-offs. Why did they wait until now to legitimately start expanding this universe? It just boggles my mind.