Showrunner: The Walking Dead will be a new show next year

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

When Fear the Walking Dead returns on Sunday night, it sounds like it's going to be a very different show than it was in its first three seasons – it has new showrunners, the story is making a substantial jump forward in time, and a character from its companion series The Walking Dead has been added into the cast (Lennie James as Morgan Jones).

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, current The Walking Dead showrunner Scott M. Gimple made it sound like that series will also be very different when it returns for its ninth season later this year. The show's season eight finale airs this Sunday (back-to-back with the season four premiere of Fear), and Gimple says

…this episode isn’t just like (this season) coming to a conclusion, but Angela and myself and the writers had always talked about this in many ways being sort of the conclusion of the first eight seasons. This show will be very much a new show next year and with a bigger, new narrative. …. And so there was just a certain weight in the air of the kind of conclusion that we were getting closer to. It was a weird graduation for everybody."

I have expressed some serious fatigue with the way The Walking Dead has been going lately in my reviews of the episodes, hoping for some kind of shake-up that will make the show feel fresh again after it's been focused on the same "war with the Saviors" story for the last two and half seasons. A quote like Gimple's above is exactly what I want to hear about the show's future. I'm hoping next season won't feel anything like the last three.

Gimple has been The Walking Dead's showrunner since season four. Next season, Angela Kang is taking over as showrunner while Gimple moves on to become the "chief content officer" for the entire Walking Dead television universe.