Not for the first time, series showrunner Scott Gimple has drawn attention to The Walking Dead season 8 and, specifically, its breathless pace.
Chatting to ComicBook.com, Gimple fielded all manner of questions pertaining to AMC’s juggernaut, which enjoyed a fairly big splash at San Diego Comic-Con last weekend – we say fairly big because, in light John Bernecker’s tragic death, the network scaled back plans for multiple showcases at the annual convention.
Fast forward to now, and with a late October premiere locked in, the excitement swirling around The Walking Dead‘s eighth season is palpable. It’s seemingly on course to break new ground, too, and during that aforementioned interview, Gimple addressed the need for a “really action-heavy story” within season 8.
I really wanted to push into different ways than we’ve done things in a long time, just by virtue of we’re a show going into its eighth year and I really don’t want to do what we’ve done before, even if we’ve done it really well. If we’re super satisfied with it, that’s why we shouldn’t do the same thing. And because of that and really mostly because of the narrative itself, I had us embrace a really action-heavy story for several episodes in a row. Even what I would call the quieter episode, which is episode 5, even looking at that, it still doesn’t feel chill and introspective.
If those comments happen to ring a bell, they should; series creator and executive producer Robert Kirkman touched base on The Walking Dead while appearing at this weekend’s Television Critics Association’s press tour, where the franchise’s founding father hinted that TWD could be about to reach its pinnacle.
We’ve got all these different factions, all these different locations – the Hilltop, the Sanctuary – and getting all these people together and continuing to expand the scale in a cool way, but really using all these pieces to their fullest. We’ve spent a lot of time setting these characters up, and now we’re going to bash them against each other and see what happens. … This is another continuation of that; this is a very fresh take on the world of The Walking Dead, and we’re going to be breaking a lot of new ground this season.
Following its annual hiatus, The Walking Dead will shuffle back onto AMC this fall – October 22nd, to be specific – and it seems those longing for a sense of closure won’t be left disappointed.