Lol.. are you serious? It would open up the entire show. A battle for power within the main characters is an entire season's worth of material. Who's way wins out and why? It actually gives the show stakes if you friends become foes. As opposed to just... Rick against foes. That's all KEEPING Rick does.
Yeah... he's got the power to continually put his group in one awful situation after another only to get out of it by mind-numbingly stupid circumstances... or a commercial break which ignores the peril he put everyone in.
Awful schizofrenic character who blew whichever way the plot dictated him.
Oh... right. Like when GOT killed Ned Stark. Or the Red Wedding happened.
Oh wait... no those were show defining moments that swung old narratives into new directions instead of just beating one narrative like a dead horse... or corpse in this show's case.
The guy who promised all those Saviors that he if they freed him and morgan he'd take them back with them... then when they did free him, killed them in cold blood? Rick has no soul... and a letter from Karl that somehow took eight episodes for him to read simply because he couldn't turn "good" again until the season finale because they would have run out of story immediately... doesn't change that.
And Maggie absolutely could turn into that leader and so could Michonne. Why are those two not relatable? Both are a) better actors b) actually have moral authority that Rick lost eons ago at this point.
The group needs an objective. Not just lets settle down and be alive,...zombie shows are always better when the group is moving.
It might take them away from the comics... but traveling cross country would open up unlimited story lines.
Maybe a small military group shows up. Says they are travelling the country to let people know that a cure has been found and there is safe haven. The government has been restored and the entire city of Reno, NV has been cleared and walled...they just have to get there to be safe.
It would take a few seasons to travel.. when they get there of course there has to be a season of blending in, feeling safe, being assigned to various work crews... then there are the possibilities of varying leadership ideas, competing factions within Reno... then the huge zombie horde coming over the mountain that nobody saw coming... then in flight again, and with all that wide open desert there is no place to hide...
of course... nothing changes the fact that once the initial shock is passed a slightly organized military force should be able to end the zombie threat when you are dealing with Romero zombies