The Walking Dead returns with its ninth season on Sunday, October 7 at 9/8c with a 90 minute premiere. As usual, the 16 episode season will air in two parts - 8 in the fall and 8 early next year. This is the first season in 5 years to have a new showrunner - Angela Kang. It will also be Andrew Lincoln's final season as Rick Grimes.
AMC said:
About the Show
The Walking Dead tells the story of the weeks and months that follow after the apocalypse. Based on Robert Kirkman's hugely successful and popular comic book series, AMC's The Walking Dead is an epic, edge-of-your-seat drama where personal struggles are magnified against a backdrop of moment-to-moment survival. A survivalist story at its core, the series explores how the living are changed by the overwhelming realization that those who survive can be far more dangerous than the mindless walkers roaming the earth. They themselves have become the walking dead.
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.
Graphic Novel: All comic-related discussion must be enclosed in spoiler tags. NO EXCEPTIONS! Please tag and label your posts, e.g. [Graphic Novel/Comic Spoilers]
Our resident Dead-capper Charlie Mason has screened Season 9's first three episodes and happily reports that, under new showrunner Angela Kang, there's a renewed focus on the AMC drama's core characters and, better still, actually playing the key relationships that were backburnered during the war with the Saviors. Add to the mix a couple of new mysteries and more romance than we've seen since Maggie was widowed, and it would seem there's still a lot of life in the undead.
The Walking Dead season 9 premiere feels like the fresh start the series so desperately needs, trading grim wartime for a more peaceful period of growth and reflection. For the first time in a long time, The Walking Dead may actually have something of a bright future ahead of it.
'A New Beginning' doesn't abandon All Out War because it can't, regardless of how poorly received that storyline may have been. It grows a new story out of the ashes and dares to make The Walking Dead frightening again while evolving it at the same time. It's an ambitious undertaking for a show in its ninth season – especially one that's about to lose its central character — but one Kang and the cast seem well-poised to make work.
The last two seasons were so irredeemably awful that I had all but given up on The Negan And Friends Show. Now, for the first time in years, I'm actually looking forward to the next episode. I'm looking forward to The Walking Dead returning to what made it so entertaining to begin with. I'm not holding my breath, mind you, but I'm more optimistic than ever.
That may not be a ringing endorsement, but it's more than I could muster for two long, dragged out seasons. And that's something.
Though The Walking Dead only has Andrew Lincoln for a short period of time in Season Nine, it may be some of the best story, performances, and excitement in years. Angela Kang is making good use of his final days while wisely building the characters who will continue in his wake.
Kang is loading the show with quality character, relationships, and mystery (including that helicopter everyone wants to know about) right off the bat. Quality beyond Rick's exit remains a mystery but if Episode 9x02 and Episode 9x03's nostalgia, mystery, and heart aren't enough to hook people in for another round, there's simply nothing more she can do.
After watching the latest Fear the Walking Dead (which became somehow decent midseason) do you think they will merge the two shows? It feels like it. Both getting rid of their main stars and the story in FtWD points forward it. I kinda like this idea.
Edit: need to see the season final tho so maybe everything chances last minute
After watching the latest Fear the Walking Dead (which became somehow decent midseason) do you think they will merge the two shows? It feels like it. Both getting rid of their main stars and the story in FtWD points forward it. I kinda like this idea.
Edit: need to see the season final tho so maybe everything chances last minute
The news about the season sound solid, but I'm not going to get hyped up like crazy anymore, the last 2 seasons were such a disappointment. Hopefully they are indeed correcting the course. Plus most of the times the pilot of each season has been interesting, so I expect one good episode for now at least.
They've been pushing this whole "Rick's final season" thing so hard I'm pretty sure my grandparents know. I still think they should've killed him off instead of Carl or at the end of last season and made an actual surprise moment out of it, rather than use his exit to desperately promote the show. But I guess they milked Carl's death too so it probably would've been the same situation.
Hard to imagine how things will look without him though, especially if Maggie and Michonne are right on his heels. Is "Walking Dead with Norman Reedus" enough to keep people invested? I'm interested to see how they plan to fill the coming void.
I might jump back into this show with this season. I skipped the entire part 2 of season 8 but I really have no desire to go back and watch it. Hopefully this is season is more of a fresh start for the series.
Damn, how did I miss all these cast updates. Luna from The 100, Captain Charles Vane and Opie! Not so sure about Samantha Morton as Alpha, but let's see. Hope the show will do justice to the border part from the comic and the confrontation between Alpha and him.
It's wild looking at the cast as someone who dropped out when they first got to the prison (was that S3 or S4?). I'm like "who are 90% of these people?!" Lol.
Folks, it finally happened: "The Walking Dead" is watchable again. With the Negan storyline in the rearview mirror, and a promising new status quo in place, the first three episodes of Season 9 are as strong as anything the show's done since the heyday of Season 4.
Now this is still "The Walking Dead," so things can certainly go south at any time. I doubt the show can resist the siren song of "yet another evil human faction" for long, and who knows what the show will look like once Rick and Maggie are gone. But for the first time in a long time, there's hope.
I'm sure it is really string to start as they get to send off some of the most important characters in the series. Once they're gone though fucking RIP. Going to go to shit so fast as they desperately try and make people care about garbage tier characters.
I know these are Rick Grimes last episodes but is it possible they don't kill Rick off? Possibly leave his fate ambiguous or just have him kinda leave like Morgan did but obviously not to another show. I could see this happening on the hopes that maybe Andrew Lincoln decides to come back down the road.
What I don't understand is why AMC is actively spoiling such a huge moment for it's viewers in the promos. Why the hell would you announce your killing off your biggest, most popular character? Can you imagine if HBO announced they were going to kill Ned Stark two episodes before it happened?
Should I bother with the second half of last season? It was all sorts of awful and I struggled to get through episode 10(?). I kinda know what happens and I want to see what this show can be without Gimple at the helm
What I don't understand is why AMC is actively spoiling such a huge moment for it's viewers in the promos. Why the hell would you announce your killing off your biggest, most popular character? Can you imagine if HBO announced they were going to kill Ned Stark two episodes before it happened?
They've never said that they're killing him off. Just that Andrew Lincoln is leaving the show (which made headlines the world over and would have been impossible to hide from the public).
Should I bother with the second half of last season? It was all sorts of awful and I struggled to get through episode 10(?). I kinda know what happens and I want to see what this show can be without Gimple at the helm
