The Walking Dead leading up to epic finale with cliffhanger

The Walking Dead will continue its creatively resurgent run when the second half of season 10 kicks off Feb. 23 on AMC. While attention is firmly focused on the impending departure of series star Danai Gurira as Michonne, there are plenty of other questions to be answered along the way. Questions like: What’s going to happen to our heroes stuck in a cave with a nasty horde of zombies? What’s next for Negan now that he has joined up with Alpha and the Whisperers? And will we hear more from that mysterious voice on the radio?

We asked showrunner Angela Kang about all of that. We also found out what we can expect from the season finale, which she teases will be “epic” and also contain a cliffhanger leading into season 11. But there’s a lot to get to before then, and Kang promises that “things of massive importance happen in every episode moving forward for now.” Here’s what else Kang told us about what to expect coming up.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You left a bunch of people stuck in a cave with a horde. So what can you say about that cave cliffhanger you left us on and where we’re going to pick up?
ANGELA KANG: We’re going to pick up in the cave with our people and to see what they do, trying to navigate their way out of this incredible danger. This is really screwed up situation. Our people are really clever and strong, but it’s a pretty precarious situation that they’re in. So we’ll tell that story. I think it’s a really fun little action adventure, some horror, and we’ll see if they all make it out.

What can we look forward to in terms of Negan’s Whisperer experience? Obviously, this is a big exciting portion of the comic book. I’m sure you’ll take a little from there and you’ll be doing also some new stuff with this. So how you did you want to approach that?
One of the things that we love from the comic book is Negan amongst the Whisperers, but as with anything with the show, there’s a bit of the comics leading the way and then there’s a bit of us riffing off of that inspiration and hopefully delivering some other surprises for those fans, who are very familiar with the comic books. We know that Beta is not the biggest fan of Negan, and I think Negan shares that feeling right back at Beta.

But Negan is in with Alpha and we see the ways that he does what Negan does so well, which is try to read people, try to see how he can work them. It’s fun to see what these two do with their roles, because they’re both very smart, formidable leaders and now they have to wrangle each other and kind of negotiate what the roles are and how they feel about each other, and how they may cause trouble together.

It must have been exciting putting Jeffery Dean Morgan and Samantha Morton together in a bunch of scenes and coming up with what you wanted to do with them. I have to imagine that was pretty fun.
Oh, it was so much fun. Samantha is amazing and Jeffrey’s amazing and just the idea of writing scenes for these two really formidable actors, who play these formidable characters in the show, that really opens up a lot of imaginative avenues for everybody. It’s been a lot of fun. Those two are great together.

Let’s talk about the radio. You guys have teased this voice on the other end. How much are we going to be continuing that in the second half of season 10?
We will definitely be playing more with the voice on the radio, in terms of who this person might be and what it means for our people. I won’t say much more than that, but we have a little bit of fun with that.

Let’s look ahead to the finale. Obviously, you’re not going to give us any specifics because we’re still a ways off from that, but what can you say in terms of what we’re going to see there and what you wanted to do with that last chapter?
We’re working on the last chapter in post-production right now. I hope it’s really exciting for the fans. We’ve really tried to deliver something that feels epic. I’ll say as a preview to getting towards the end, it gets really important to watch every episode, because as we get closer and closer to the finale, things of massive importance happen in every episode moving forward for now.

So there is some stuff that could feel like a finale, smack in the middle of the run of the back half. So there’s some cool stuff. At the finale itself, there’s some really big emotional important things that happen, as well as some new stuff, which will hopefully be surprising for people.

How do you want to approach it? Because you all do some different things with your finale. Sometimes it’s, “All right, this is going to sort of wrap things up here.” Sometimes it’s more, “We’re going to introduce what’s going to happen the following season.” Sometimes there’s cliffhangers, sometimes there’s not. What light can you shed on that?
I’ll just say that there’s some big stuff and there is a cliffhanger, without getting into what exactly that is. But I think hopefully it will be exciting.

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

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The Walking Dead leading up to 'epic' finale with cliffhanger

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