Jon Bernthal to Return for Season 9 of The Walking Dead
It’s confirmed! Jon Bernthal, AKA Shane Walsh, is set to return for one episode in season 9 of The Walking Dead!
Most fans, either of the comics or the show, know that the character of Shane was killed off at the end of season 2. So it’s fair to speculate his character will return in the form of a flashback or hallucination, most likely when Rick Grimes is on his way out. Whether he is killed or walks away leaving a door open for Rick to be in future episodes, Shane is proving you don’t need to be alive in the apocalypse to come back for an episode here and there!
Rick is the only character left with the strongest connection to Shane.
Only 2 others of our remaining survivors Carol Peltier and Daryl Dixon knew Shane from season 1 and 2; Daryl getting put in that infamous illegal choke hold, and Carol most likely remembers Shane for beating the hell out of her abusive (and thankfully now deceased) husband, Ed. Whilst those brief moments are memorable, it seems much more likely Shane’s brief return will be linked to Rick.
For those who need a recap of Rick and Shane’s relationship, the very first episode of The Walking Dead “Days Gone By” starts with Rick, dressed as Sheriff of King’s County with Shane as his partner, sitting in a squad car and talking about the women in their lives over some burgers and fries.
They get a radio call for a car with 2 men, armed and dangerous and they head to the scene to lay some spike traps to bring the offenders’ car to a halt.
A gunfight ensures, when both known gun wielding suspects are killed and the officers drop their guard, a third man emerges from the car and shoots Rick, resulting in him being in a coma.
No one is 100% clear on how long this coma lasts, but Dave Erickson, showrunner for Fear The Walking Dead, told TechInsider during an interview that he got an answer from Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comics. Kirkman said “The coma, Rick was probably out for just four to five weeks.”
And boy, did a lot happen in those 4 to 5 weeks!
The undead began to rise and society as Rick knew it was turned on it’s head. Not only was the greater world around him shaken to its core, but Rick’s own marriage to Lori Grimes was also gone…at least until Rick found his family again, of course!
During those weeks and with the belief that Rick had died in hospital, Shane took it upon himself to care for Rick’s wife and son, Carl. However, it went much further than that with Shane and Lori starting a relationship whilst trying to find some kind of sense in the new world they found themselves in.
But as we all know, Rick Grimes was not dead and eventually found his way back to his wife and son, stunning everyone, including the rest of the rag tag group that had formed in the woods outside of Atlanta, Georgia. With Rick now back in the picture, a heartbroken Shane was cast aside.
Over the course of 2 seasons, Shane’s character slowly went from heartbreak and jealousy, to resentment, hate, and eventually leading to the penultimate season finale of season 2 with the plot to lead Rick out to the field and to kill him in the hope Shane and Lori would be together once more.
And let’s face it, part of us did feel absolutely heartbroken for Shane after Lori and he had that final conversation. Hats off to whoever did the music for that scene, it paired perfectly with the devastated look that spread across Shane’s face as Lori tells him how grateful she is to Shane, how she didn’t know who’s baby it was she was carrying, how what they had meant something, and that she’s sorry. That’s surely more than any guy’s heart could take!
So Rick followed Shane into the woods, despite knowing what Shane’s plan was.
And we all know it didn’t turn out well for Shane! After Shane lead Rick into the field, Rick talked him into giving his gun to Shane, it was then he took the opportunity to stab him as Shane dropped his guard.
With Shane now lying dead in the middle of a field on Hershel’s farm, the young (and armed) Carl Grimes came out looking for his father, and walked upon the grisly scene. With Rick’s back turned to Shane to focus on his son, the newly dead Shane reanimated from the dead and began stumbling towards Rick. Carl took the shot that put Shane in the ground for good this time.
This gunshot lead to the horde of walkers destroying the idyllic farm retreat, their home, and took lives in the process.
However, that wasn’t the last we saw of Shane Walsh.
During season 3, after Rick lost his wife Lori due to complications in delivering the child by an extremely improvised C-section, Rick understandably lost his mind for a while and was hallucinating A LOT! From hearing a phone ring and the voices of his deceased friends and wife on the other end of the line, to seeing Lori around the prison grounds. And in one very weird scene that was cut, making out with the hallucination, and when she pulls away her face is that of walker Lori! Disturbing as f!
During the season 3 midseason finale “Made to Suffer”, we see Rick, Daryl, Michonne, and prison inmate Oscar head into Woodbury to rescue Maggie and Glenn from the Governor. During a gun battle as they try to escape, Rick hallucinates seeing Shane as one of Woodbury’s gunmen.
He fires on him and even goes to check the man’s face. Obviously, it wasn’t Shane, but that was the last time we saw Jon Bernthal in the role of Shane on the show!
Since his departure from the show, Bernthal has gone on to have some major success in his acting career. From the WWII epic, Fury to playing the iconic Frank Castle in The Punisher, which is soon to launch its second season on Netflix!
“I mean, there’s a reason why Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Wayne Callies and Steven Yuen and Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus, that we all consider each other best friends and family," Bernthal told Den of Geek.
"When we started [The Walking Dead], it started in an unbelievably humble place, you know, we had no idea what that show was going to become.
Doing the show and being killed off the show are two of the best things that have happened in my career.
All we knew [about The Walking Dead] was there was a script we really believed in, there was a showrunner [Frank Darabont] we really believed in, and we got to know and love each other intimately and believed in each other and we had no idea whether it would be a success, or a failure and we really didn’t care. We just believed in it."
How ever this return for Bernthal plays out in the show, it will be nice for fans to have one more familiar face around briefly, maybe to ease the grief we will all feel once Rick and Maggie have been killed off or walked away. I think it’s pretty exciting for fans to have Bernthal’s calibre of talent back on the show, even if it is just for the one episode!
Just as long as he doesn’t turn up in the same white dress Lori did in Rick’s previous hallucinations!!