'The Walking Dead' Showrunner Talks Deanna, the New Carl, and the Negan We'll Meet on the Series
Warning: This interview about the “Start to Finish” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.
We’ve got a few cliffhangers from The Walking Dead midseason finale, like who will survive in the herd-overrun Alexandria, and whether there will be enough left of the town itself to rebuild into the community Deanna so desperately wanted it to become. Oh, but Deanna… sadly, there’s no cliffhanger there. She died a heroine’s death, using the bullets she was saving to keep herself from turning into a walker to instead take out a few of them to make things a tiny bit easier for Rick and the others who are left (again, so far) to carry on. There was also that big promise of the impending arrival of TWD comic book bad boy Negan, the villainous Rick rival who will be played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and introduced sometime during the second half of Season 6.
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The good news: The Walking Dead showrunner Scott Gimple tells Yahoo TV the Negan we’ll meet on TV will be very recognizable to the character comic book fans know, and the other TWD characters should fear. “There is no reinvention of Negan going on for the show,” says Gimple, who also talked about the evolution of Carl, the badass-ery of Deanna, and the Morgan/Carol showdown, and provided lots of hints about what to expect when the series returns on Valentine’s Day.
Let’s start with Carl. He really stood out in this episode. He is really emerging as this character with the toughness and savvy of Rick, but less hot-headed than Rick. He elects not to kill Ron, when he absolutely would’ve been justified to after what Ron did. He also didn’t add to Rick’s stress by telling him about Ron, he dealt with it himself. And he had the best line of the night when he said to Ron, “You need to know something… your dad was an a–hole.” Did you see this, also, as a big episode for Carl, and is this the Carl we’re going to continue to see?
Absolutely, absolutely. I’m thrilled that you got that out of the episode. We see Carl managing a more adult situation when it comes to Ron. There’s stuff with Enid, there’s stuff with Ron’s father, Pete, and what went down between Pete and Carl’s father… Carl’s doing a good job managing that, where he knows he’s so far ahead of Ron, and he’s being understanding to Ron, but he’s not being so understanding that Ron can pull a gun on him. We’re seeing a big evolution in Carl. There’s a lot more to come.
We also, of course, got the big Morgan/Carol showdown. There are no two characters who are more beloved and respected than them, so it’s tough to see them butt heads. Is there a chance they can get to a point where they can agree to disagree, if nothing else?
Hmm. They’re nowhere close to that point right now, obviously. Things couldn’t be more intense between them. They’re diametrically opposed. It is interesting that Morgan just wanted to talk about it. He didn’t want to kill [the Wolf]. There was no rush to kill that guy, considering the situation that they were in. Carol felt she couldn’t wait another moment with that person still alive. And yet, she didn’t just shoot Morgan. There’s a bit of a parallel going on there. Things are very complicated between the two of them, but they seem to have some things in common.
Morgan is very wed to the ideas Eastman left him with, but he hasn’t yet made the connection, the realization, that part of the reason Eastman was able to live out the “all life is precious” philosophy was because he was living by himself in the woods. The decisions Eastman made following that philosophy didn’t affect anyone else in the woods. Obviously, Morgan’s decisions do affect a lot of other people, with some almost disastrous results, like Rick and the RV. Is that something that’s going to occur to Morgan at some point?
That’s all very, very good stuff. I might request that you watch with a lot of people, because I like these insights. I think [“Heads Up”] was really important with Morgan to show that he was struggling. He was in this situation that he wasn’t sure about. There was no way out of that situation [holding the Wolf hostage] he’d gotten himself into. I think when he said he wanted to talk about it with Carol, to work it out, he really did. He wanted to hear what she had to say. I don’t think he was completely confident of his point of view. It’s interesting. Part of it is, he’s not living alone in a cabin in the woods. That said, this is something that he feels is important for not only himself, but people around him, for who they’re willing to be moving forward. There are no easy answers there. He is willing to take such risks to ensure the survival of, not the Wolf, but rather his own humanity, and the humanity of the people around him. Something that Dale was trying to do so long ago. I think it’s interesting that it seems this killing isn’t weighing upon Carol. It is. At the end of “JSS,” she was sitting on the stoop crying. She was trying to get away from [Rick’s] group in [Season 5’s “Strangers”], because she didn’t want to have to keep killing. She loves these people, and she’ll always do it for these people. There’s a lot that she and Morgan have in common, and there’s a lot they need to talk about. This situation did not allow that. Not at all.
We also got a great sendoff for Deanna, who was… she got to be a badass at the end. She was always such a tough character, and added a lot to the story, a different point of view and attitude for a lot of people, especially Rick. I know it’s always tough to let go of any character that makes such a big impact, and of course, the actor, Tovah Feldshuh, is so amazing. What was particularly tough about letting go of this character?
Well, I’ll say this. Tovah’s amazing, so everything was tough about letting go of Tovah. Of the character… Deanna was always a fighter. She’s like half Rick’s size, and when they met, this kind of feral dude with a beard who was taller than her, she was standing up to him. She was standing right up to him, even though she didn’t really know exactly what the world was really like, because of the trick of history, because of that quarry, because of the walls. She was tough, and she was a fighter. Answering your question in a different way, it’s not what was hardest about losing her… what made it somewhat easier was to see her go out maintaining who she was, which was a fighter, with all of the knowledge that Rick had given her, and fighting to the end. It was so heroic, and it was so awesome to see. And that scream that she did was improvised. Mike Satrazemis, who directed the episode, was like, “You’ve got to check this out,” and I was like, “Holy crap, that’s awesome!” She’s screaming in the face of this world. That, in some ways, just that performance, that moment, seeing it play out there, with that amazing score at that moment… it made it easier. I thought it was one of the more badass deaths you would see on a show, and that it was Deanna? That made me really proud of all the work those folks had done. The hand-off between that and Bear [McCreary’s] amazing score, just the way it was shot and everything, I was really, really thrilled with it.
Among Deanna’s legacies is her son, Spencer, who we did not see at all in this episode. Should we assume anything? Is he OK, dead, or maybe he decided to try that plan of his again, to go outside and get a vehicle to draw away the walkers?
[Laughs.] I’m just going to say… yes. I hope that everybody’s thinking the same way as you on that, that all those possibilities are on the table. I don’t want to disabuse anyone’s speculation at this point.
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Speaking of that, we got a little sneak peak at Season 6.5, and an official mention of Negan. There are so many expectations with Negan coming, and sometimes the show follows the big points and the character development from the comics, but just as often does not. How did you approach developing that character to bring him to the series? Differently than you have with other characters?
We have a little bit of a road to Negan. I do want folks to know that. That character is very well drawn in the comics. There is no reinvention of Negan going on for the show. He’s all of those things… charismatic, brutal, smart, ferocious, very frightening, hilarious, inappropriate, sort of weirdly friendly, fun-loving. He’s a strategist, he’s id… we’re trying to do the Negan from the comics. There’s always changes and things get to be flesh and blood, but I’m hoping that people see the Negan in the comics when they see the Negan onscreen.
You mentioned, in the message Chris Hardwick read on The Talking Dead last night, that the midseason premiere in February is one of the biggest episodes you’ve done. That’s saying a lot, given the Season 6 premiere with the quarry and the herd. Why do you characterize the episode as such?
Well, it is. When people see it, I think they’ll agree. I think it’s, that many walkers in a contained space is pretty breathtaking, pretty scary, pretty challenging to do. Then we figured out ways to make it more exciting, more scary, more difficult, on ourselves. You’ll see. I do believe it’ll be worth the wait. It’s a very, very explosive episode.
The nonlinear storytelling from the first half of the season paid off in some fun ways. Even going all the way to Season 5 storylines, like finding out where Morgan got the Goo Goo Cluster he had in Father Gabriel’s church in Season 5. Those moments feel like little rewards for viewers really paying attention. Will that kind of time jumping continue in Season 6.5?
The next half of the season… we try to do a new show, reinvent it, every eight episodes. These next eight are very different than the previous eight. That said, yes, there are [time jumps]. It’s a cumulative show, and there are things from [the Season 6 premiere] that play out all the way to the end. There’s one episode where the tone is almost completely different than any episode we’ve ever done. There’s an episode that has, and I know how scary this sounds, one of the lightest tones we’ve ever done. Dare I say it’s funny? I know, considering where we just left off, that’s kind of a tall order. The plot kind of takes over for a little while, which is something different than we’ve pushed before. I want these chapters to be very different from one another. Not as many smaller-roster episodes… more episodes with more characters together. Things really build and build and build and, of course, get very intense. We definitely go to some interesting, very strange places for the show. I can’t wait, either. A lot of people say, “Ah, man, why are you making me wait until Valentines Day?!” I don’t want to wait, either. We’ll get through it together.
Both Greg Nicotero and Norman Reedus have been telling me about the Daryl/Rick episode in the second half of the season, which sounds fun. What can you hint about that episode?
It comes early on. It’s a little “Butch and Sundance.” It’s a deceptively fun episode that actually has huge repercussions on the greater story. Norman and Andy are very funny in it. In moments, they are very, very funny. Very scary in some moments, but I really loved what they did. I can’t wait for people to see it. So, see, there’s a lot for us to look forward to. The two and a half months will go by quickly, hopefully. I mean, you’ve got Christmas, you’ve got New Years, there’s going to be that whole thing. Really, it’s just January you have to get through. Once you get through January and you hit February, it’s all right there.
The Walking Dead returns Feb. 14, 2016 at 9 p.m. on AMC.
