Sunday night’s mid-season return of The Walking Dead fixed a lot of the past half season’s problems: it kept Rick Grimes and his gang of survivors together rather than splitting them up. It resisted the temptation to focus everyone’s attention on Negan or the anticipation of Negan’s next appearance. And it featured a good old fashioned horde of Walkers that needed to be slaughtered.
And slaughter them Rick and Michonne did, using a cable hanging between two cars to mow down over 300 of the undead. We get that number from The Walking Dead website’s Story Sync function, which blows away the previous record held by Glenn in season five when he drove a vehicle through a horde of zombies, earning him 50 kills.
What’s really interesting about the gory cable scene is that it was put together on the fly as the crew filmed the explosives scene. Originally, the herd simply got a bit too close while the gang was collecting dynamite and Rosita was supposed to throw a bundle of sticks into the Walker crowd, giving them enough room to escape. But executive producer Greg Nicotero decided to spice things up when he saw the cable and and a missed opportunity from the writing team.
“It wasn’t in the script,” Nicotero said in an interview with ComicBook.com. “We wanted the episode to have a big bang so when we come back, we were always coming back with a splash. We knew that we had a lot of pressure because of what we did last mid-season premiere, and we were like, ‘How are we gonna top what we’ve done before?'”
Last season’s return featured Alexandria overrun with Walkers that ended up tearing Jessie, Ron, and Sam to shreds. They needed a bigger bang than a little dynamite would provide to compete, and a massacre via cable seemed to fit perfectly. It also gave the show’s new power couple Rick and Michonne a chance to kick ass.
“I pitched it to Scott. I said, ‘Let’s have them hot wire the cars. As long as we can separate Carl and Tara and them from Rick and Michonne, it gives us a great opportunity to have Rick and Michonne do something together.'”
The perfect ending to a Walking Dead Valentine’s Day episode. Is there anything more romantic than breaking the record for most Walkers killed in a single episode together? I don’t think so.
(Via ComicBook.com)
