The Walking Dead season 9 boss talks Tara, Enid, and those spikes
But why kill off some of the people who died, especially when the outcome was in its own way different from the comics? We can go ahead and answer the latter part of this — they don’t want to just replicate what’s out there in the source material! This is its own creation with its own surprises, and a part of that includes removing people from the equation who may still be there in the comics while also keeping other characters still alive. One such example of that (comic spoiler alert!) is Ezekiel, who many felt was going to die with his head on a spike just because that’s the gruesome fate that befalls the character in the Robert Kirkman comic world. (Trust us — we’re more than happy to still see Ezekiel breathing.)
If you want to see our video reaction to last night’s episode, including our take on it making very little sense to kill off familiar characters in a way that’s almost blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, check out the video below! On the other side of watching that, we highly recommend that you subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube. Also, take a look at our The Walking Dead playlist for some other updates!
As you would imagine, the decisions that go into killing off characters on a TV show are a little more complicated than the comics — after all, you’re dealing with performers’ livelihoods here as opposed to just imaginary people in a story! In discussing some of the big decisions of last night to Entertainment Weekly, here is what executive producer Angela Kang had to say:
You know, there were so many conversations about it, because it’s really hard to decide who dies, and any time there is death on the show, sometimes it’s just story-related, sometimes, as with Andy [Lincoln], it’s because there’s a personal factor. There are contractual things. There are all kinds of things that go on. In this case, we love all of our actors. Some of the people who are on those pikes, we knew from the time we cast them that they were gonna be on the pikes. We specifically cast Brett Butler as Tammy knowing that she would wind up in that array. And we told her that at the time we cast her.
So clearly, these deaths were plotted and dictated for a number of different reasons and we get that — though it still doesn’t change the fact that losing a character like Tara in this way is especially brutal. We’re saying this knowing full well that there could be a real “bring out your dead” situation coming in the finale where even more familiar people die and we’re left with an off-season in which we don’t really get to see anyone grieve. Then, season 10 will begin and presumably, it’s then just on to the next stuff and nobody’s going to take stock in those who have fallen. We get that this is a brutal, difficult world, but it doesn’t make losing some of these people any less sad.
For us what we would really like to see in the finale is a major thinning of the survivors and bringing us back to the basics. There are so many characters now that no one is really that invested in that we need a season where we really dive into some new people in a way like we did with season 2 at the farm. let us get to know one new group of people really well.
To preview the finale further…
Be sure to visit the link here! Also, let us know in the comments what you think about the decisions that were made last night! (Photo: AMC.)