The Walking Dead showrunner previews season finale's 'frozen world'

Get ready for an all-new look for The Walking Dead on Sunday’s season 9 finale. That’s right, snow is finally coming to the show, which only makes sense seeing as how the action has been set in Northern Virginia (which receives plenty of flakes) since the back half of season 5. We already got a peek at what to expect with the first batch of finale images, and then star Norman Reedus promised us the finale would be “visually stunning.”

We also asked showrunner Angela Kang about what to expect from the winter wonderland. “We’re gonna do some really fun things in the finale,” says Kang. “You saw in the very last scene of [the last] episode that it’s looking really cold, and some flakes of snow start to fall. So we’re gonna go into some uncharted territory for the show. And I’m super psyched with how stuff looks. I’m excited for the audience to see a frozen world in the finale.”

I’ve been asking the Walking Dead producers for four years when we were actually going to see winter on the show, and it turns out it is a question that Kang had been asking the team even longer. “What’s funny is when I interviewed for the show after season 1 had aired,” reveals Kang, “I talked about snow and asked about snow in that meeting. And so it’s been on my wish-list for a long time too. It’s not the easiest thing to pull off during the time of year when we shoot in Georgia. But we figured it out. I think it’s pretty cool. So we’ll see what people think.”

Of course there will be more to the season finale than just the weather. Kang gave us a tease in terms of what to expect with the story as well, and the aftermath of Alpha and the Whisperers decapitating 10 people (including Tara and Enid) and leaving their zombified heads on pikes to mark a do-not-cross border. “We’ll be dealing with a lot of the emotional fallout from what’s happened,” says Kang. “And we’ll also play with some tension and real scariness, having to do with the threat of the Whisperers. So I think it’s super cool, and I’m very excited to share with the audience.”

And what does Kang expect audiences to feel when all is said and done in season 9? “I hope that they’ll be feeling the triumph of the human spirit and the will that people have to go on, and how they can find strength in the face of grief.”

For more Walking Dead intel, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.

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