'The Walking Dead:' Andrew Lincoln discusses baby Judith's paternity

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Andrew Lincoln's character Rick Grimes finally addressed the question of his toddler-age daughter's paternity on Sunday's edition of The Walking Dead.

As fans will remember, Rick was hospitalized in a coma when AMC's zombie-apocalypse drama began seven seasons ago. His best friend Shane [played by Jon Bernthal] helped Rick's wife Lori [played by Sarah Wayne Callies] and their young son Carl [played by Chandler Riggs] escape to safety, with all three believing Rick was dead.

Shane and Lori started a sexual relationship, during which baby Judith may have been conceived, but the romance stopped when Rick woke up and eventually found them. Rick and Lori immediately reconciled, leaving Shane bitter, angry and violent.

Rick killed Shane in Season 2 and Lori died after delivering her second child in Season 3. Rick and Carl have been caring for the girl ever since.

Although longtime members of the group have joked about who fathered the baby, Rick and Carl never spoke of the possibility she could be Shane's.

Rick revealed to his current partner Michonne [played by Danai Gurira] Sunday that he knows Shane, not he, was Judith's true dad, and he insisted he has accepted this. The disclosure was a means of explaining why his and Michonne's group of survivors needs to be subservient to the villainous Negan and his Savior gang.

"It blew my mind, only because I understood it made sense of what was happening. The choice he'd made with the Saviors. It was a very, very interesting and brilliant way of echoing that heroism that he'd shown with his own child. That he'd sucked it up and he just said: 'It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I love her; she's my daughter. Even if she's not mine, she's still my daughter.' I think that was a brilliant way of explaining what Rick was enduring and capable of enduring," Lincoln said in a taped interview for the analysis program Talking Dead.