THE WALKING DEAD: Kirkman Weighs In On Midseason Finale Shock

The zombie serial’s executive producer Robert Kirkman weighs in the dramatic events in the midseason finale, “Pretty Much Dead Already”, and previews the “awesome stuff” coming up when the season resumes in February.

This piece contains spoilers for “Pretty Much Dead Already,” you may want to watch the episode first before continuing..

So, the survivors never-ending search for Sophia has come to an end. Unfortunately, the girl who didn’t know how to stay put had been long turned into a walker. SHOCKA!

EP/writer Kirkman shared his take on “Barnageddon” and teased the remainder of the season to EW. To the ~~barn~~ quotables..:

On the Zombie Sophia shocker..

It’s good to know people didn’t see it coming. That’s a big concern when you have this kind of story line and you are leading to that kind of reveal. You don’t want people to be expecting it, especially in the Walking Dead. I pride myself in the fact that, when you pick up an issue of the comic, you don’t know what’s going to happen at any time. So any time we can work that into the show and maintain that in a television environment, it’s very exciting for me. I’m glad people are being caught off guard.

On whether the season’s slower pace was intentional with this episode’s revelation in mind?..

Possibly. It’s weird. It’s not like we sat down and decided that we were going to move at a slower pace. But I guess you can’t really dispute that. We were kind of talking our time with things. It was always supposed to be this episode that this was revealed. There wasn’t any kind of milk-things-for-all-they’re-worth decision. I think we were just moving at a deliberate but somewhat relaxed pace.

On whether Hershel knew all along that Sophia was in the barn?

You can certainly assume that.

On whether Hershel was, in part, trying to prepare Rick for Zombie Sophia by referring to the Walkers as ‘sick people’..

If I were to put on my detective hat I would say that, if Hershel did know that Sophia was in the barn, he might have just said, “Oh yeah, that girl’s sick, we’re keeping her in the barn.” So it’s entirely possible that he didn’t know. We’ll find out very early on in the return episode coming up this February.

On Jenner’s whisper..

When we reveal exactly what Jenner whispered, we will reveal what Jenner whispered. It’s not going to come in like an “Oh, was that it?”-kind of way. You’ll know that we’re revealing that when we do it.

On the possibility of romance developing between Daryl and Carol..

Look, there’s not a lot of people in this world and people are going to start pairing off. Whether their relationship is a very strong friendship or if it’s something romantic remains to be seen. But there definitely seems to be something going on between those two.

On what’s coming up in the second half of the season..

All kinds of awesome stuff. These people are going to be pitted against each other now. Hershel’s been keeping these walkers a secret and now they find out that Sophia’s been in the barn the whole time. Shane isn’t going to suddenly calm down. That’s something I should probably point out. I mean, he was pretty angry there at the end of this episode. He was probably a little shocked by Sophia coming out of the barn but I wouldn’t expect him to put his gun down and be like, “Okay, well, I’m good now.” So there’s going to be tremendous amounts of conflict that comes from that and there’s going to be a lot of aftermath dealing with the shocking revelation and there’s going to be a lot of crazy new stuff thrown into the mix. I think we’re going to see some new characters very early on, introduced in our first episode back. There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff coming up.

Source: EW

The Walking Dead Season 2 continues February 12 with “Nebraska”. You can watch a sneak peek here.

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