[Major spoilers for The Walking Dead below]
The Walking Dead returns to AMC for the second half of season nine on February 10, and when it does, fans can expect a memorable (and memorably violent) scene from Robert Kirkman’s comics to appear on the show.
After discussing this season’s rare use of flashbacks (“I’ll say, it’s more than once”) and Negan breaking out of jail (“We get to tell a really, I think, pretty cool story with Negan, as he goes on an adventure of his own”), showrunner Angela Kang teased the introduction of the “Harvest Festival” to Entertainment Weekly. Basically, Alpha (played by the great Samantha Morton) and the Whisperers lay siege on Alexandria; Ezekiel and Rosita, among others, get kidnapped, decapitated, and their heads are placed on pikes to mark Whisperers’ territory:
“Yes, we are going to see the festival. That becomes a part of the story for the back half of the season. We really dove into the idea of what this festival is in a real way for our people. The origins of these kinds of trade fairs were that people from far-flung communities would take a trek and trade useful goods because not every community had every single thing that they needed. It’s a place where people could learn new skills and pick up supplies that they needed. It’s also a chance for them to bond as different communities. In that context, we really get to see what each community is and how they’re even dealing with the very idea of this fair, because obviously, it’s been a point of some contention between the Kingdom and Alexandria. That’s a story that we see play out over the course of the back half.” (Via)
Kang didn’t confirm that pikes will be involved, but well, remember the unused title sequence?
Ezekiel and Carol shouldn’t get comfortable.
I mean, no one should ever get comfortable during the zombie apocalypse, not when humans are pretending to be zombies, but especially those two, and Rosita. As for the midseason premiere, Kang said the action picks up “on top of where we left off, and our people are there and they obviously are gonna have to fight their way out. But they will make yet another strange and shocking discovery along the way within the episode, and the story kind of unfolds from there.” Hopefully Beta (Opie!) is quickly involved.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)