AMC’s The Walking Dead lost another fan-favorite character. Danai Gurira, who plays the role of the iconic katana-wielding character, Michonne, is leaving the series after season 10.

Is TWD done with Danai Gurira?

She has recently signed a deal for her final season of the zombie drama. Her new contract explains that she will return in only a handful of episodes in season 10. The 40-year-old, who plays the role of Okoye in MCU, is likely to segue into the upcoming three Walking Dead movies based on Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes.

Danai Gurira in the custom of Michonne

Like Lincoln, who left the series after the first half of season 9, Gurira’s departure also became considered a creative blow to TWD. As both of them are focal points of the series. AMC programming president David Madden said about her character in an interview in November,

“She has been very vocal about saying that she loves the show. We love Danai; we love that character. Right now, she’s got a lot of opportunities and she needs to weigh what she feels is best for her. But, we certainly would want her on the show as long as she wants to be on it.”

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He continued,

“We really want her to stay. She is an incredibly valuable character and I’m really hoping she stays. Obviously, the lesson of Andy [Lincoln] is that the show can survive anybody’s departure if need be, but that’s not our goal. The goal is to have Danai continue on whatever basis she can make work, given the other things that she has going on in her life.”

Lincoln and Gurira were romantically linked on TWD, and Madden said he has “high hopes that Rick and Michonne’s paths will cross again.”

The actress, a Master of Fine Arts from New York University, rose to stardom after joining the series in season 3 in 2012.

Life after The Walking Dead of Danai Gurira

Gurira co-wrote and starred in Off-Broadway’s production, In the Continuum, for which she won an Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award. She won a Tony nomination for the 2016 play, Eclipsed, which starred her Black Panther co-star Lupita Nyong’o. While Gurira has signed a one-year contract, her co-stars, Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon) and Melissa McBride (Carol Peletier), signed multi-year deals with AMC.

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