Previously on AMC’s The Walking Dead, the survivors were in dire straights as Beta sent an enormous horde of walkers to surround their should-have-been safe house at the abandoned medical tower. Thanks to sneak peeks and trailers, though, we know how the gang is going to get out of this one: by reusing a tried and tested trick. They’ll cover themselves in zombie guts and blend into the crowd. This time, however, there will be an added complication.
While teasing what’s to come next on Comic-Con@Home’s virtual TWD panel last Friday, director Greg Nicotero revealed the difficulty on this occasion is that there are Whisperers amongst the walkers. What this means is that the survivors have to be extra careful not to be spotted by Beta’s soldiers posing as the undead. The risk is doubled, then, so it’s possible not everyone will make it out alive.
“In this particular instance, our people, we know that they know how to move within the herd. We’ve seen it since Season 1 episode 2 [‘Guts’], when they put the walker guts on themselves. But they’ve never had to maneuver within a herd that has human beings in it, as well,” said Nicotero. “So the whole challenge for them trying to figure out how they’re going to get out of the situation is they can’t just be as stealthy as they usually are because there’s actually people, there’s Whisperers in and among the herd of walkers.”
Nicotero added that this complication “ups the stakes quite a bit” for our heroes. Moving away from giving anything else away, the producer/director also gushed about how much he loves the cliffhanger of episode 15, “The Tower,” and also his admiration for the whole of season 10.
“I loved the last few shots of episode 15, where you see Beta with the thousands of walkers advancing on the tower,” Nicotero continued. “I really gotta give Angela [Kang, showrunner] and the writers a huge, huge thumbs up, because I felt like the trajectory of this season, the way that the season built, it just felt like every episode gave you something more than the episode before it. It felt like you were on this really great ride.”
The Walking Dead 10×16, “A Certain Doom,” will act as the conclusion of the Whisperer War arc and is set to introduce the Commonwealth into the TV series for the first time. Lauren Cohan is back as Maggie, too, while there’s that mysterious masked man to ponder about as well. It finally airs on AMC on Sunday, October 4th.
