Featurette: Season 9 of The Walking Dead is ‘cowboys & zombies’

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

I don't have high hopes for the upcoming ninth season of AMC's The Walking Dead. The show feels like it's running its course. I didn't get much enjoyment out of season 8, and I don't see how things can carry on now that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is following his son Carl out the door… That said, I would love for season 9 to pull me back in and bring back the feeling I used to get from watching this show in its earlier seasons.

The newly released featurette that offers glimpses of moments from season 9 and has comments from the cast and producers does make the upcoming episodes (being promoted as "Rick Grimes' Final Episodes") look quite promising. I like the idea that the season is going to deal with the ways the old world has begun to break down around the characters. They're low on bullets, low on gasoline, using candlelight and riding around on horseback. That's all cool stuff. I like how Lincoln describes the style of the season as "cowboys and zombies".

Even as I lose hope for The Walking Dead, I'm still dedicated to watching the show for as long as it's on the air, so I would really like to see season 9 be a vast improvement over its predecessor.

The season's synopsis:

Last season brought the culmination of “All Out War,” which pitted Rick Grimes and his group of survivors against the Saviors and their cunning leader, Negan. With Negan’s life in his hands, Rick had a character-defining choice in front of him. By making the unilateral decision to spare Negan, Rick upheld the values his late son, Carl, championed in order to build for the future, but created conflict within his group.

Now, we see our survivors a year and a half after the end of the war, rebuilding civilization under Rick’s steadfast leadership. It is a time of relative peace among the communities as they work together, looking to the past to forge the future, but the world they knew is rapidly changing as man-made structures continue to degrade, and nature takes over, changing the landscape and creating new challenges for our survivors.

As time passes, the communities confront unexpected obstacles, danger, and of course, walkers, but nothing quite prepares them for the formidable force they are about to encounter, which threatens the very idea of civilization that our survivors have worked so hard to build.

The Walking Dead season 9 begins airing on AMC on October 7th.