The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman opens up about that shocking mid season finale

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I’ll make this short and sweet, the following news item is going to contain SPOILERS on the mid season finale of THE WALKING DEAD. If you have not seen it yet, do not proceed. GOT IT? Good!

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, did you dig the episode ‘Pretty Much Dead Already’? I thought it was rather solid, certainly made for some huge developments. That ending however I saw coming; I had a suspicion about it some weeks back and it panned out. It was a good one, and I am glad this little sub-plot is sorted but the events and actions of everyone leading up to it have certainly set a tone for what’s to come.

Want to know the goodies on the show? Well writer Robert Kirkman spilled the beans to EW! EW commented that the shooting of the zombie Sophia made for a good end to these episodes his comedic response was “Thank you very much. Yes, we love shooting children here at the Walking Dead.”

EW commented on the bait and switch, with characters discussing the search for Sophia and then BAM. “It’s good to know people didn’t see it coming. That’s a big concern when you have this kind of story line and you are leading to that kind of reveal. You don’t want people to be expecting it, especially in the Walking Dead. I pride myself in the fact that, when you pick up an issue of the comic, you don’t know what’s going to happen at any time. So any time we can work that into the show and maintain that in a television environment, it’s very exciting for me. I’m glad people are being caught off guard.” I am sorry Kirkman, this writer did see that coming! Oh snap!

Kirkman also spoke about the different pace and the twist they had up their sleeve. “Possibly. It’s weird. It’s not like we sat down and decided that we were going to move at a slower pace. But I guess you can’t really dispute that. We were kind of talking our time with things. It was always supposed to be this episode that this was revealed. There wasn’t any kind of milk-things-for-all-they’re-worth decision. I think we were just moving at a deliberate but somewhat relaxed pace.” In regards to Hershel, EW wondered whether we should assume he knew about Sophia. “You can certainly assume that. If I were to put on my detective hat I would say that, if Hershel did know that Sophia was in the barn, he might have just said, “Oh yeah, that girl’s sick, we’re keeping her in the barn.” So it’s entirely possible that he didn’t know. We’ll find out very early on in the return episode coming up this February.”

And what’s to come “These people are going to be pitted against each other now. Hershel’s been keeping these walkers a secret and now they find out that Sophia’s been in the barn the whole time. Shane isn’t going to suddenly calm down. That’s something I should probably point out. I mean, he was pretty angry there at the end of this episode. He was probably a little shocked by Sophia coming out of the barn but I wouldn’t expect him to put his gun down and be like, “Okay, well, I’m good now.” So there’s going to be tremendous amounts of conflict that comes from that and there’s going to be a lot of aftermath dealing with the shocking revelation and there’s going to be a lot of crazy new stuff thrown into the mix. I think we’re going to see some new characters very early on, introduced in our first episode back. There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff coming up.”

A whole of interesting stuff, we’ll see what happens come February when the show returns. Not sure I am a fan of this mid-season break for a show with a shorter season, we’ll see how it works out.