Second Half Of The Walking Dead Season 8 Will Keep The Pedal To The Metal

True to their word, Greg Nicotero and Co. have delivered a breathless opening to The Walking Dead season 8. And it seems things are just getting started.

In the fallout of last night’s episode, “Monsters,” ComicBook.com has now rolled out some new intel pertaining to season 8’s pacing, and how it’ll spill over into 2018, when AMC will launch the second, conclusive chapter to its bloody all-out war. In fact, if Nicotero is to be believed, the second half of The Walking Dead S8 will be just as frenetic as its predecessor, proving that, yes, when it comes to season 8 and its much-touted 100th episode, the show’s creative players really did start as they mean to go on.

It does. The pace stays right on par with where we start. For me the trick is, we’re just about into episode 15, and I haven’t seen the outline for 16. We really haven’t — we haven’t been pitched the second half of season 8, we don’t know. And I’m kind of excited to not know!

And whereas previous instalments of The Walking Dead ramped up to a mid-season cliffhanger, Greg Nicotero previously teased that season 8 is “dramatically different” because of the way in which it handles the transition from episode 8 to episode 9. Remeber, this is a 16-episode arc, so there are still plenty of surprises in store.

Per ComicBook.com:

Traditionally, the way The Walking Dead works is we kind of set up our first half of the season to lead us into this second half. Usually the second half of the season kind of shoots us off into space, so when we lay these little seeds and as things start to germinate, something that happens in episode two may not pay off until episode 13. I feel like this first half is going to feel like the second half of most of our seasons where we’re already kind of taking off and I think people are going to be blown away by it.

The Walking Dead season 8 continues this Sunday with the premiere of “Some Guy,” and if AMC’s bigwigs have their way, TWD might well outlive us all to become one of the longest-running series in TV history.