How The Walking Dead will transition from series finale to spin-offs

Dalton Ross
·5-min read

There is only episode of The Walking Dead left. Of course, there are also plenty of episodes of The Walking Dead left. That's because while the Nov. 20 series finale may be grounding the mothership show, there is a bevy of spin-offs in the works that will follow Daryl to Europe, continue with Maggie and Negan in New York City, and reunite lost lovers Rick and Michonne.

So how much of the impending finale will be setting the table for those new shows? "There's a bit of setup" showrunner Angela Kang tells EW. "But it's more with the approach of we are closing this chapter."

However, Kang acknowledges that closing this chapter will also feature some transitioning work for the next ones to come. "Things get to a point where you'll feel like an arc has ended for this show," the showrunner says. "But we're leaving a door open, which is actually also true to the way that the comics handled the end of its story, because it's supposed to be the zombie story that never ends. And so a door closes, and then another door is left open, and then you take it with your imagination. So that's kind of the vibe that we went for."

The Walking Dead- Norman Reedus; Lauren Cohan; Andrew Lincoln
The Walking Dead- Norman Reedus; Lauren Cohan; Andrew Lincoln

Jace Downs/AMC (2); Gene Page/AMC Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohan, Andrew Lincoln on 'The Walking Dead'

Kang also teases that the new installments will not necessarily begin right when and where the finale leaves off. "When the spin-offs pick up, it's not going to be exactly where you think it's going to pick up," says Kang. "So those are doing their own thing. They're taking the ball and running down the field with it and going, 'We're starting here.' So that's kind of how we dealt with the wrangling between main show and spin-offs."

Kang also spoke to EW about what else to expect from the series finale and why "it's possible that not everybody's going to be satisfied" with how much attention each of the characters will get in the final episode.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This show over 11 seasons has sort of gone back and forth between the walkers being the big threat to humans being the big threat. There's always been a back and forth there. And now you've basically set up a finale where you have essentially two battles going on: One between our group and Pamela's forces, and another with the undead. I can't imagine that that's not intentional.

ANGELA KANG: Yeah, it's both. The interesting thing to me about the story and the underlying IP and the comics is about how humans are the real monsters. And in some ways the monsters are something to be feared. But also there's such a sad story because every single one of those zombies was once a person just like anybody else, and something horrific happened to them. You're not a zombie unless something horrible happened to you and the people around you had the worst day of their lives.

So I just thought that that was such an interesting way to look at a zombie story. But the zombies are always dangerous. It is always a pressure point upon the humans. And without the threat of the zombies, maybe the humans would act differently. But by having those two things providing pressure on everybody from all sides, it does change certain dynamics. And I think there's some really cool walker action that we got to do. Really, [director Greg Nicotero] pulled out all the stops with some of these sequences, but also there's these human dynamics that are really, really fraught and they're just at a loggerheads and they've got to figure out their way through that.

The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead

Jace Downs/AMC Michael James Shaw on 'The Walking Dead'

You have so many main characters still out there. How do you wrap up so many people's stories in one episode?

What I'll say is that this is the approach that we took, and it's possible that not everybody's going to be satisfied with this, but when you do have that many characters, you cannot give every person equal weight in something that is basically, I don't know, 60 minutes of screen time. You're just gonna have a nothing burger story.

So the way we looked at it is when we get to the end, we want a hint of what has happened to everybody, but we really use this entire block of episodes to point the spotlight at different people at different times, so that hopefully everybody got a moment to shine and to show who they've become in this. But they still have this one last fight to go through together. But the finale is definitely focused more on some particular stories. It's not going to be every single person gets equal screen time, because like I said, it just makes it impossible to wrangle.

Is there going to be a tag scene at the end of the finale?

I can't give that away. [Laughs] You don't want to know anyway.

Any other teases you can give us for the final episode?

I just want to say there are some standout performances in this episode. I really want people to just love these actors and what they're doing. And I think one of the things that's really fun and special about this is the score was actually a full orchestra. So we recorded a full orchestra that Bear McCreary and Sam Ewing composed for and conducted and it's so beautiful and feels so cinematic in that way.

So I think people will enjoy the feeling that it's trying to go out with a bang, but it's also something that you'll have a lot of feelings for and we get to see a lot of our heroes being incredibly heroic. So it's a lot of fun to be had while people are also crying into their horn. [Laughs] So hopefully people will watch.

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