As though hoping to head off disappointment with last night’s midseason finale at the pass, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman is getting out ahead of our frustrations with the low body count by promising to satisfy our bloodlust on Valentine’s Day, when The Walking Dead returns next year.
During last night’s The Talking Dead (which many may have missed because it now airs after Into the Badlands), Robert Kirkman touched upon the episode’s prologue (which also aired during Into the Badlands), which introduced a mention of Negan by a group of Saviors on motorcycles. Kirkman also reiterated that the Wolves and the Saviors are “completely different groups … they’re equal threats, possibly … We’ll be finding out a lot more about the Saviors, Negan’s group, soon.”
Kirkman also suggested that Negan will upend The Walking Dead‘s narrative when the character played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan arrives late in the season.
“This catalyst is going to be thrown in at some point in the future that’s just going to fundamentally change everything that we are doing,” he remarked during The Talking Dead.
Showrunner Scott Gimple also weighed in with a note, promising that the next episode — the midseason premiere — is going to be “gargantuan.”
“Episode nine is one of the biggest episodes we’ve done,” he wrote.
Echoing Gimple’s sentiments, Kirkman also added with a gleeful laugh, “So many people die.”
It would’ve been nice if a few of those people had died in last night’s episode, but we can wait three months to tally up the body count.
It’s also worth noting that Kirkman was also asked why characters don’t smear themselves in zombie guts to disguise themselves more often. Kirkman noted that it’s usually an option of last resort because there’s still a high risk of being bitten, that the zombie guts themselves can lead to infection, and that the entrails will dry out and have to be frequently replenished.
Plus, who wants to go around smelling like zombie rot?
