'The Walking Dead' showrunner discusses the show ending and what to expect in the final 30 episodes
- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "The Walking Dead."
- Angela Kang tells Insider the delayed season 10 finale feels like a lifetime ago since she's currently at work on the show's final 30 episodes.
- Kang says despite "TWD" ending with season 11 the final season will play as if it's two seasons of a show.
- We should learn more about the mysterious Commonwealth community along with Negan, Daryl, Carol, and Maggie in the extra six bonus episodes.
Though audiences are just seeing "The Walking Dead" season 10 finale for the first time, it's something that has been sitting with its showrunner, Angela Kang, since 2019.
"It feels so strange because we've been hard at work on the new episodes," Kang told Insider of what it's like to finally talk about an episode that was originally set to air in April 2020 before it was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"It feels like this was a lifetime ago that we made this because it was actually almost a year," Kang added.
In the past six months, Kang and the show's writers went from being headdown writing season 11 to shifting their game plan after the pandemic forced production on the series to shut down.
Then, in September, AMC announced its long-running zombie series will conclude after a super-sized season 11. In addition, the show would add six bonus season 10 episodes to the mix. Kang will then lead a spinoff centered around fan favorites, Carol and Daryl.
Now, instead of starting to air its 11th season, "The Walking Dead" is currently about to begin production on these more contained bonus episodes in Atlanta, Georgia which never would have been a part of the original show plan.
But if anyone's up to the task, it's Kang who was given the keys to the flagship series at a time when its main star, Andrew Lincoln, left and many weren't sure if "TWD" could succeed without him. Fast-forward and the past two seasons of "TWD" have been the show's best-reviewed seasons in years.
During our finale catch-up with Kang, in addition to asking about the return of Connie and that all-too-brief Daryl/Negan/Beta fight sequence, we asked her how the pandemic shifted her game plan, if at all, for the show and what we can expect from the final 30 episodes of the zombie series.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What it was like behind-the-scenes when the pandemic forced production on "TWD" finale to stop in March
What is it like to finally have this episode air? I feel like you've been sitting on this and haven't been able to talk to anyone about it for the longest time.
I'm glad to finally air it. This was an episode that obviously got caught up with the very beginning of the pandemic, kind of shutting down business operations all over.
So we were in our last couple of weeks of work. We were trying to get to the finish line, but once they kind of shut nonessential businesses in California, there were all these processes that we couldn't finish. So it's taken a while, even to just finish VFX [visual effects]. We had VFX houses in Europe that were having to shut down operations and there's all this rendering machinery that people don't have in their homes. So it took longer than people might expect to actually finish everything.
We haven't been sitting on it too, too long, but it's really good to finally get it out in the world because obviously we were so close to actually making it to air within its normal time slot. It feels so strange because we've been hard at work on the new episodes. So it feels like this was a lifetime ago that we made this because it was actually almost a year. So it's definitely just a marker of the times that we live in and I'm just glad to have it out to the fans finally.
When Kang learned the show would end and how the pandemic affected the timeline the series.
Well, let me address the elephant in the room first, before I, before I do a deep dive on Connie and the rest. The show is ending. That was one of the most bittersweet calls I've been on. I received your statement, but how long have you known for, when did you find out, and how has this shifted the course of how you think about your show plan creatively? I always imagined "Walking dead" going beyond a season 11. In a normal world, we would've been speaking about season eleven right now.
Yeah, that's right. We normally would be.
It's really bittersweet for me and everybody on the show, too. We have not known forever. We obviously knew a bit in advance of it being announced. To think about ending the show, this has been such a big part of my life and the lives of everybody that's been working on the show for many years. Our hearts are so in this show and in the family of cast and crew and even executives and everybody that has been been along this journey. For the writers, for my team, they basically found out kind of the same time as others as well.
We're just kind of reorienting to think, OK. Now we've got these episodes ahead of us. How do we use them to tell a fantastic story that brings the series to a close in a way that hopefully feels satisfying and true to this series that we've been working on for so long?
Luckily, we've got a lot of episodes ahead. There's 30 more episodes, which, you know, that's going to take a couple of years to wrap up. So, in some ways it still feels far off for those of us that are sort of in the day to day of making the show. But yeah, it's definitely a bittersweet time and just lots of focus on going forward into the future.
The pandemic is changing how they'll film the final 11th season
In my mind I saw the show going on at least 12 seasons. I know we're getting into that last arc of the comic after the season 10 finale. I have to ask was that the original plan? Did the pandemic shift the show's timeline? I feel like you need to be on a certain schedule with the other shows and the movies. The show wrapping up in 2022, that would have been, in a pre-pandemic world, 12 seasons. When I think 30 episodes, that's almost two regular seasons of a show. [Note: Each season is typically 16 episodes.]
Yeah. It's true. It runs as if it's two seasons of a show. It's been decided to make it a super-sized season, which that stuff is not really what I focus on. I do the creative and it's like, OK, it's going to be this many episodes in the season. Then we just adjust our plans, accordingly.
We still kind of think about it in terms of blocks of episodes for how we sort of arc our creative. The thing that's going to be different is that the shooting is going to all happen in one big block, once we're past the six episodes that we're working on currently for the season 10 extension.
The scheduling is different. As with every place and every show, the pandemic has changed so much of planning. The normal schedule we've always been on for years and years and years is not the same schedule we're going to be on when stuff starts to air because everything has shifted across all programming, I'm sure at AMC. Within the 'TWD' universe, none of our premiere days have been able to stick because everything has slid so much. We're just trying to adjust accordingly.
In terms of blocks, the final season is 24 episodes. I don't even know if you know if it's going to be separated as three sets of eight episodes or two halves of 12. Maybe you guys are still working that out.
I don't think... I am not exactly sure. I have an idea. I think it's in blocks, but that's really a question for the programming folks. We're just trying to work on the creative part.
What Kang has to say about the Daryl and Carol spinoff: It's a road show.
Towards the end of the episode, Daryl tells Carol that New Mexico is still out there. Carol says, "Maybe someday." Is that a hint at what to expect from the Daryl/Carol spinoff? I spoke with Scott Gimple. He said, some seeds may have been planted. It sounds like maybe any ideas you may have had to continue "The Walking Dead," beyond the 30 episodes, maybe those ideas will see the light of day on the Carol/Daryl show. Anything you can say?
Yeah. The idea of the Carol/Daryl spinoff had been kind of percolating for a number of years. Just in the show, we started to lightly lay in this idea that, with these two, they have itchy feet. They're both lone wolves. They like to wander.
So I think those were all sort of things that we started to lay in a little bit at a time in the show, this idea that they're curious about what else is out there. They have feelings sometimes of like, 'Wouldn't it be great to just kind of go out in the world?'
That was definitely stuff that we started to kind of lay in [the show] just in case this spinoff came to fruition. Obviously, now it's been officially green-lit to series and, without getting too direct about what they'll be doing, we've been saying it's a road show. So who knows where that might take them at the end of the day.
It's "Ride With Daryl... plus Carol."
I guess so, right? [laughter]
What exactly are these bonus season 10 episodes? And who will appear in them?
As, as I'm winding down, anything you can share about these six bonus episodes, because they were recently described to me as "in-between-quels." To me, that description means we'll get more individualized episodes centered around other stories that occurred maybe during season 10 because of the challenges of filming safely right now with crowds. So maybe we'll learn what Maggie was up to since season nine. I don't know if I hit the nail on the head there.
In order to film safely, we've had to think really deeply about what we can accomplish at this point in a way that is hopefully still really creatively satisfying, but that doesn't have 300 zombie extras in a scene breathing on all of our actors.
It's been a really interesting and fun creative challenge for us on the writing side, um, to try to do some deep dives into some of our characters. There are things that kind of tie in together. There are things that are going on with our people and their communities and so there are things that start to tie those into what will become the major story in season 11.
We'll learn more about Maggie's adventures. There's some other things that we're doing deep dives into like Daryl and Carol and Negan, Gabriel, and Aaron has some really cool stuff. We'll see other characters in there. We'll check back in with that group, with the Commonwealth. So, hopefully there will be some really good stuff. I'm not even sure if I should be saying all of this because I'm sure there'll be a press pop later, too.
But we're having a lot of fun, just kind of doing some real, very character-focused stories with interesting twists. I know that everybody on the acting side is eager to kind of get back to work, because they've all been missing each other and missing their, their art and craft. We're just working on all the pre-production aspects of that right now.
What else Kang can say about the final season of "TWD"
I know I have to let you go. So I'll finish with, what can you tease as we're going into the final 30 episodes of the show where it looks like our heroes are faced, yet again, with another potentially menacing group, the Commonwealth?
Oh my gosh, what can I tease at this point? I'll say that there's just really interesting themes that come up in the comic books in this stretch that we're heading into. So there are types of stories that we'll be telling that I think will feel actually quite different. Even this many years in, there's still just ground to cover that we're certainly feeling energized by and interested in.
And also there's a pretty large amount of original story that we have going forward that we've been having fun working on. So we'll tease more specific as we get closer because so much of it is still in progress right now, but we're just forging ahead trying to make what we can [with] the real estate that we have story-wise.