The Walking Dead is in a really weird place right now. The show is in its ninth season, and ratings have literally never been worse. It’s hemorrhaging cast members, from lead Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes) to Danai Gurira (Michonne). Yet at the same time, The Walking Dead is going through a bit a critical and creative renaissance, with last week’s daring episode getting a lot of buzz. So we’re in a situation where people are increasingly leaving the show just as it points itself in interesting new directions.
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Honestly, I don’t know how much longer The Walking Dead can last if the ratings keep dropping, but creatively, cast member Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon, who’s basically the lead now) is feeling pretty good about it. “I love the risks taken,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “After nine years, you have to reinvent yourself a little bit. I just want to make the show that we want to make, and it feels like that’s what we’re doing. You can feel it in the crew. You can feel it in the cast. You can feel it in the scripts. It’s the show that we want to make.”
In fact, apparently the show’s swing back to quality after a couple of middling seasons even has those who walked away rethinking their decision. “It’s funny because I talked to the other day,” Reedus said. “And he was like, ‘Man, I picked the wrong time to leave the show because it’s so f—ing good right now.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you did, dude. You picked the wrong time.’”
Now, we should mention that Lincoln isn’t completely out of the Walking Dead universe — he’s set to star in a series of standalone movies for AMC, and Rick isn’t dead, so he could always come back. We wouldn’t even be completely shocked if he showed up in tonight’s season finale, “The Storm.”
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Reedus had a few things to say about that episode, too. “It’s completely different. It was so fun to shoot. It’s a different look, 1000%, in the end. It’s a huge, visually explosive episode that’s going to be visually stunning.”
"It’s not a wrap-it-all-up-in-a-bow episode. It’s definitely a moving forward sort of vibe. It’s just huge."
Is that enough to reverse the show’s fortunes? I don’t know, but like I said, The Walking Dead is in a really weird place right now, and that beats boring.
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