The announcement that The Walking Dead‘s season 10 finale would be delayed until later in the year was unfortunate news for fans of AMC’s zombie drama. As it stands, this Sunday’s episode “The Tower” will act as the finale, almost certainly leaving viewers with a frustrating cliffhanger and a lack of closure for the nearly fifteen hours spent invested in the season thus far.
Like so many other films and shows that have suffered delays in the last month or two, the postponement of season 10 finale is a result of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the world. It’s now responsible for 1.1 million infections and nearly 60,000 deaths, and as governments work tirelessly to mitigate the spread of the virus, it’s effectively put an end to most entertainment productions and left thousands of people in the industry stuck self-isolating in their homes like the rest of the world as everyone anxiously waits for the outbreak to calm down.
ComicBook.com had a chance to catch up with The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang to pry a bit more information out of her about when we might get a chance to see the finale. Though she wasn’t really able to give fans a date to look forward to with so many variables to contend with during the outbreak, she did go into a bit more detail about why the episode was delayed and what it will take to get it on the air after things start to normalize again.
We were very close to finishing 16. We usually deliver the episodes for a big VFX heavy episode about 2 weeks before we air so we were about a week and a half out at the point which California shut down. So, what is continuing remotely is the effects that can be finished but even after all of that’s done, there are shots that need to be laid in, there’s a color process that needs machines to be finished, there’s sound work we usually do on the Warner Brothers stage. That’s very complex VFX equipment, that you can’t just move into somebody’s home over night.
We are very, very close to finishing so I think actually by the time the world is safe for people to start venturing out, probably all of the VFX will be done and then it’s just a handful of processes that they can turn around very. very quickly. We’re very hopeful that we can get it all done once everybody is back up and running.
By the sound of it, hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to see the finale after life starts getting back to the way it was before the pandemic.
Elsewhere in the chat, Kang also spoke about the status of season 11, saying:
“We’re continuing to work on the future season remotely because writing, I think, is the easiest process to do remotely,” Kang said. “Even that is a little tricky. We’re not able to work at the same exact pace as we would if we were in the office.”
In the meantime, as previously mentioned, season 10 of The Walking Dead will wrap up this Sunday at 9pm on AMC. If you’re feeling impatient, you can grab a quick sneak peek at the episode by clicking here.
