The Walking Dead boss teases more intelligent zombies in season 11

If we cast our minds back to The Walking Dead season 1, you may remember that some of the zombies possessed a little more intelligence compared to what we see later on in the show. For instance, there’s a zombie that smashes a window with a chair; there are a few that can climb walls; some can open doors. As the show went on, the zombies became slower and dumber zombies, but the final eight episodes appear to be bringing back the smarter variant.

In the closing moments of the teaser for the new episodes, we see Aaron (Ross Marquand) tell everyone that he’s “heard stories of walkers that can climb walls and open doors.” We get an ominous look at a zombie’s hand reaching over a wall. Take a look:

“I think with the walkers, in some way it is a throwback to some of the walkers we saw back in the very, very first season of The Walking Dead, but not everybody ever encountered those walkers,” showrunner Angela Kang told Digital Spy. “It’s almost like it was a variant that just was regional. And anytime there is a change to the rules, that means that people just need to be that much on the penny because they are realizing that the methods that they used to survive don’t quite work the same way.”

With our survivors never knowing what kind of walker they may meet, they’re going to have to adapt. “Our survivors need to be very, very smart and try to adjust to that, and that is one of the many conflicts that they will be dealing with in the final season,” Kang said.

This isn’t the first time that the return of “smarter” zombies has been teased. You may remember that the post-credit scene from The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 2 featured Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich) in a video call to France, where we get a glimpse at running zombies. It seems to imply that this zombie variant originated in Europe.

The Rick and Miconne show will be an “epic love story”

The last time we saw Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead was in season 9, when he was carried away, severely injured, in a Civic Republic helicopter alongside Jadis (Polyanna McIntosh). Later, Michonne left to look for Rick; we haven’t seen her since.

For years we thought there was going to be a trilogy of movies that wrapped up Rick’s story. However, during San Diego Comic-Con, franchise boss Scott Gimple confirmed that the movies were officially dead. In their place, we will get a six-episode series following Rick and Michonne, airing in 2023.

Details on the show are pretty sparse so far. Will we see more of the CRM? We don’t know. Why didn’t Rick return to Alexandria? We don’t know. But we do know that the series will be a love story. “We’re doing the show for AMC+, six episodes, an epic love story, that’s about it,” Gimple told Digital Spy.

Interestingly, the Rick and Michonne spinoff isn’t set as a limited series, meaning there’s potential for more. Let’s not get our hopes up for several seasons just yet. I mean, the six episodes are literally supposed to wrap up the loose ends. But you never know…

The Walking Dead returns for its final-ever episodes on October 2 on AMC!

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