To celebrate the Oct. 22 Season 8 premiere of The Walking Dead — the series’ 100th episode — Yahoo TV will be posting a new TWD-related story every day through the season opener.
Everything’s looking swell with Maggie’s pregnancy on The Walking Dead, but, as showrunner Scott Gimple revealed during Sunday’s special Season 8 preview edition of Talking Dead, Baby Rhee will not be born during the upcoming season.
Which could mean a couple of things: (a) the baby will not be born during the new season and will not be seen at all during Season 8, or (b) the baby won’t be born during Season 8 but could be introduced to viewers as an older version of Maggie and Glenn’s son. Remember that shot of Old Man Rick in the San Diego Comic-Con Season 8 trailer, the one that has fans thinking the season could include a time jump? So, yeah, just sayin’, just because we have confirmation that Maggie doesn’t give birth in Season 8, that doesn’t necessarily mean Hershel’s grandchild won’t appear in the new world in Season 8.
As for other tidbits revealed during the preview special:
• Gimple said the Oct. 22 season premiere — the show’s 100th episode — is “the fuse that lights [throughout] … then by the end it explodes and starts the season going.”
The opener sets up the next 100 episodes, Gimple said, and will lead into Episodes 2-4, “breakneck speed” installments that are “full of action … probably the most consecutive action episodes we’ve had on the show,” before the series then goes “a little acoustic.”
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan on how Negan is going to react to the events of the Season 7 finale: “We’re gonna find out, kinda right away in Season 8, that he is not happy” about the new anti-Saviors alliance that has formed with Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom.
• Guest Lennie James shared a major event for his Morgan in Season 8: “There is a big, big, one-on-one fight that Morgan has … that we hope is kind of monumental. It’s kind of iconic, it’s well within the genre, and it’s two guys with certain skills pitching them against each other.”
James, who joked that his character is simply trying to avoid becoming “Cray Cray Morgy” again, was also asked by a fan which TWD character he’d like to play if he wasn’t playing Morgan. His answer: Eugene. “I’d quite like to rock that mullet,” he said.
• “If you’ve been watching this show since the beginning, you don’t have to be a sleuth” to spot the shout-outs to the past in the season premiere, Gimple says. In fact, throughout the season, there will be “visual echoes … situational echoes … dialogue” to celebrate the first 100 episodes. He also promised some “stupid” wordplay in the premiere, which he hopes will remain his own “stupid little joke.” Joked Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick, “If I know the internet, no one’s going to call you out on anything!”
• More on Old Man Rick from the trailer: Gimple promised the scene would not turn out to be Rick awakening from the coma he was in when the series began, a fan theory that would have meant Old Man Rick woke up from the coma and Seasons 1-7 were all a dream. There’s no Bobby Ewing shower in our future.
• A new preview clip from the season premiere showed a conversation between Rick and Maggie, as he tells her the Hilltop community is lucky to have her as its leader (something Gregory will not be pleased to hear, we’re guessing). “You showed me how to be someone worth following,” Maggie tells Rick. Rick: “Good. After this, I’m following you.”
• Another Gimple tease: The scene of Negan with Father Gabriel in the SDCC trailer is tied to the fact that Negan’s backstory will start to unfold in Season 8. Father Gabriel will help facilitate that, Gimple said, in a “bit of a confessional booth” way.
• We all love King Ezekiel’s right-hand man Jerry (Cooper Andrews), and Gimple promised that we’ll see a new side of Jerry in Season 8, a more “soulful” side that will come without puns.
The Walking Dead Season 8 premieres Oct. 22 at 9 p.m. on AMC.
