The Walking Dead showrunner previews Commonwealth assimilation

There is a lot to resolve when The Walking Dead returns for its second batch of season 11 episodes Feb. 20 on AMC (and a week earlier on AMC+). When we left off, Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) just had rocket-powered arrows shot at them out of a medieval weapon called a Hwacha, zombies had infiltrated a flooding Alexandria, and Eugene's (Josh McDermitt) group was still getting comfortable in the new community of the Commonwealth, which may or may not be a post-apocalyptic utopia.

So what can we expect when things pick back up? That's exactly what we asked showrunner Angela Kang. How will our heroes do in their new surroundings? Is Carol going undercover again? And who exactly are the enemies now? We fired our own rocket-fueled questions directly at the showrunner.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We left with a bit of a cliffhanger with Leah (Lynn Collins) shooting off those rockets. What can you say about how things pick up?

ANGELA KANG: So when we pick up, we are coming almost right off of the end of the finale. And so we have got the crazy contraption firing arrows, our people are at odds with the Reapers, and so they have got to resolve this situation on their mission to get food and save their people. So we have got that, and then we also have our group back at Alexandria who are just dealing with being buffeted by the elements. They have got walker trouble ahead and these storylines are just kind of simultaneously building to a climactic point, while the Commonwealth is still out there. And that becomes a more and more important part of the story going forward.

We have seen in the trailer some of the integration of some of the Alexandria folks into the Commonwealth. What can you say in terms of how that assimilation will go?

I think as with any time our people link up with the new community, there is going to be people who are true believers and go like "this is great." And then there are always our skeptical ones who are looking for what is going to go wrong here, and I think that that holds true. I think that the integration is very smooth for some and very bumpy for others.

We see Carol (Melissa McBride) with cookies again in the trailer. Does that mean she's going little ol' me undercover again like she did when she first got to Alexandria?

Carol definitely has a very particular and specific role to play at the Commonwealth. And anytime Carol is with her cookies, it is a little bit like hiding her true skills, because they all had to do a job that was like something that they did before. And to everybody else, she was just a homemaker and nobody that did any particular job that seemed of any special interest, but we know a lot more about Carol now, obviously.

If you look back, we've had the Governor and Woodbury. We've had Negan and the Saviors. We've had Alpha and the Whisperers. Who's the enemy now on this show as we go into 11B?

There are some things that will be revealed over time, so I do not want to get too much into specifics of any particular people and how those stories play out. But I will say that what is unique about the Commonwealth is that there is so much bureaucracy there. And I think what a lot of our people are trying to figure out is, how does this society even work? How do we even talk to the people in charge if we have a problem?

Kind of like in the comic book story, as our people get into more of an organized civilization that is large and has taken a lot of the structures from the old world but adapted it somewhat and amplified certain things somewhat, they are frustrated. The society itself can be a pressure point for them at various times as they are dealing with being stuck in a very stratified, class-driven place. And as well as that, there are other threats that are out there in the world. So they are grappling with a lot.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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