The Walking Dead season 8 spoilers: Avi Nash cast in mystery role

The Walking Dead season 8 has added another player to its arsenal; Avi Nash is coming aboard the show, but the finer details are still under wraps.

Here’s what is known for the time being: Nash, (a relative newcomer whose only major TV credit is an episode of Silicon Valley) is a new player on the hit AMC zombie drama. This news was first confirmed by Comicbook.com, who could not confirm his precise role. Yet, indications point to it being “Abbud,” a character described in the initial notice as “an innately likable Muslim American whose nerves are, let’s say, jangled, because he’s flown solo for too long in zombieland.”

Is Abbud likely a stand-in name for another character? More than likely, given that this is often the way that the show tends to work. They don’t want to make anyone too aware as to specific characters in advance, given that it makes it so much easier for people to speculate from the source material what’s coming up. Plus, it also means that there are more people peeking around the set hoping to get a first-look photo of them. This is a show that already has a pretty enormous problem as it is when it comes to people snooping around set in the first place.

(Warning: There are some possible spoilers ahead, given that we’re going to discuss comic-book connections.)

One theory that is out there about Abbud is that he is actually Siddiq, a character who plays a pretty prominent role in the story following the All Out War storyline when things flash-forward a couple of years following everything that happens there. This is someone who has a romantic history with Rosita, and originally hailed from Oceanside. What makes this so important is that it means there is at least one male survivor within that community, which is inhabited at present by all women.

If the show chooses to introduce Siddiq before the time jump (if this is even Siddiq), they may just be mixing things around a little bit. One other common staple with this show, in addition to masking names in casting notices, is that they don’t often follow things to the letter when it comes to castings. Sure, there are some things that they follow pretty closely from the comics — see the death of Glenn — but we’ll appreciate the little difference between the two mediums. That’s one of the things that we love about shows based on book/comicbook source material – Rarely does a show follow the source material to the letter, so it gives different insight to characters and even a bit of a different story sometimes that we didn’t get in the source material.

More news to know

The Walking Dead season 8 premieres this fall on AMC, following the conclusion of the second half of Fear the Walking Dead season 3. If you head over here, you can actually see the first trailer for the new Walking Dead season — there is even a small glimpse of Nash in there if you look hard enough!

Meanwhile, feel free to share some more of your thoughts on this casting in the comments below. (Photo: AMC.)