AMC and its pool of creative talent aren’t known for resting on their laurels.
Case in point: The Walking Dead‘s long-serving executive producer, Greg Nicotero, recently confirmed that many of the network’s leading players, including newfangled showrunner Angela Kang, are hard at work on season 9, which will presumably be with us sometime in the fall.
Not only that, but fans can expect some big changes once the new run begins. Or at least, that’s according to Scott M. Gimple, current showrunner of TWD. Speaking to EW ahead of this Sunday’s big finale, which will see the “All-Out War” arc reach what’s sure to be an explosive conclusion, Gimple teased that season 9 will feel like a new show.
“This show will be very much a new show next year and with a bigger, new narrative. It was something I was really excited about getting into even before season 8. And so there was just a certain weight in the air of the kind of conclusion that we were getting closer to. It was a weird graduation for everybody.”
While we want to get excited by what Gimple’s saying here, it’s a bit hard to. After all, we were promised something similar last year, when fan backlash to season 7 had the producers assuring us that the next run would be much improved, running at a faster pace and fixing what’d been done wrong up to that point.
Well, here we are, now at the end of season 8 and the show’s slow, drawn-out narrative style is still turning viewers away. Hardcore fans and many casual TV viewers have just gotten tired of this slow-burning approach and it’s showing in the ratings. Gimple’s promise that season 9 will feel like a new show is nice to hear, but until we see for ourselves, we’ll remain cautiously optimistic and hope that things will improve when it returns later this year.
In the meantime, that aforementioned finale is set to go down on Sunday, when The Walking Dead airs episode 8×16 “Wrath” on AMC.