‘Walking Dead’ Boss Teases Next Season: It Will Have a ‘Very Different Vibe’

“People are going to see there’s a lot more story to tell,” Scott Gimple tells TheWrap

The Walking Dead
AMC

The conclusion of All Out War is near — and it’s signifying a turning point in “The Walking Dead” as a whole.

“This finale is about closure,” Scott Gimple told TheWrap ahead of Season 8’s final episode on Sunday. “It’s about closure of the All Out War storyline, but in some ways, this is a closure to the first eight seasons of the show.”

“Season 9 is going to be unlike things people have seen before on the show,” he added. “And it really is going to take on a very, very different vibe — a very singular vibe unto itself.”

Gimple said that the Season 8 finale “will provide a great deal of closure for pretty much all the characters’ stories,” and it will also “set the stage to start some very new stuff: very new challenges for the characters, very different kinds of stories, in different kinds of situations, a real evolution of the show.” 

If every character’s story is rounding out on Sunday, does that mean the “Walking Dead” team has an endpoint in sight?

Well, I mean, we want to tell the comic story,” Gimple said, adding that when viewers see how “different” Season 9 is, “and how the stories just have just very very unusual and sort of new drives,” that “people are going to see there’s a lot more story to tell.”

Of course, Season 8 particularly veered away from the comic story (Carl is still very much alive in the books), and fans are speculating about whether or not Season 9 will introduce the Whisperers, which are the next villainous group featured in the comics, or jump ahead even further. Fans will also have to wait for the finale to see if All Out War ends the same way as the comics.

The “Dead”-verse boss left the question of when the long-running series will conclude open-ended. “That said, you never know — you can’t just say well, we’re gonna be this long,” he said. “There’s all sorts of things to the story that wind up getting built out further; some things get compressed. So our goal is to tell the whole comic story one way or another.”

“The Walking Dead” Season 8 finale airs on AMC Sunday, April 15.

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