‘Walking Dead’ EPs Angela Kang & Scott M. Gimple On The Fate Of (SPOILER) & Tonight‘s Penultimate “Family” Episode, Next Week’s Series Finale & Spinoff Twists

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of tonight’s “Family” episode of The Walking Dead, the penultimate episode of the series.

“For the longest time, we were just fighting to survive,” declares Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) in a voiceover that kicks off tonight’s “Family,” the penultimate episode of The Walking Dead.

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“Trying to get back what we lost,” the daughter of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) continues over a montage of zombie killings from the AMC’s series 11 seasons, and some throwback music from pivotal episodes. “My family, we would do anything to protect each other. And we’re fighting now for something else, something bigger. A new beginning.”

Penned by Magali Lozano & Erik Mountain & Kevin Deiboldt, and directed by Sharat Raju, this 176^th episode of the zombie apocalypse show based on Robert Kirkman’s now concluded comics shows TWD still knows how to deliver an annihilating gut punch. As Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan), Negan (Jeffery Dean Morgan), Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) and other Survivors battle the now collapsing Commonwealth and an incoming horde of Walkers, an ambush finds Judith shot and wounded. As Daryl carries the little girl out to mummers of “Daddy” from his closest friend’s daughter, who Dixon essentially raised in the absence of her father’ and step-mother Michonne (Danai Gurira), the fate of another Grimes looks grim heading towards next week’s “Rest in Peace” series finale. In fact, with wall climbing Walkers deep within the perameters of the Commonwealth, things look bleak for everyone on the cusp of the TWD finale.

That finale is from a story by long time TWD showrunner Angela Kang, with executive producer Greg Nicotero once again taking up his season ender directing duties.

Along with her showrunning predecessor and current TWD chief content officer Scott M. Gimple, Kang sat down with me to talk “Family” and the self-described “surprise” filled finale of November 20. The TWD EPs also appraised how they got here, what the sometimes blockbuster ride was like, and where the slew of already announced spinoffs will take the franchise.

DEADLINE: One of the many things about these final episodes, and I mean this is a compliment, is it’s been very much a slow burn, very much storytelling layered upon storytelling. So, give us a sense of where you see TWD at now the penultimate episode has been aired?

KANG: I think that in this block of episodes there was a lot of work that we put into where these characters are, relationships that have conflict in them, all of them thinking about the past, and what their future might be. So, that really kind of does lend itself to just more character-driven, emotional storytelling, and also, you know, just on a practical level, we had to save some money to do like a really big finale, so there’s a practical reason for that as well.

DEADLINE: Well, thank you for the honesty…

KANG: (LAUGHS) Sure, but I do also think that the story of the Commonwealth does sort of like lend itself to those kinds of stories that are so people centered, but now that we’re at the penultimate and we’re going into the finale, the finale is going to have all the fun Walking Dead stuff. So, there’s horror, scares, action and adventure, but also lots of heart, tears, and I think that that’s been sort of like what our audience has had fun watching for a long time and hopefully they’ll enjoy the ride in the finale.

GIMPLE: The way we talked about it, there’s a little bit of either a throwback in process in that when we were talking about this final season and the final part of the final season the way that Angela and Matt Negrete and myself approached the last episode that Rick had in it, was we talked about what did it all mean. What did his journey mean up until then? There were proper flashbacks in that episode, there were characters from the past. In this way, we kind of looked at this last piece, what it all means for these characters and where did they start and where are they ending.

Really this episode is all about the final intensities, the final emotional business. The final obstacles that might swallow up our people. You know, the eight at the end of this episode are as deeply in the soup as they’ve been in a very, very difficult and different situation but in some ways literal. Well, I don’t know if I would say evolution or devolution in some ways of certain things that have happened. This is it. With those echoes of the past and the current devastating situation that they’re in, how does that all come together, implode, explode? How do they stand in solidarity or get taken down together. That is setting up this conclusion for The Walking Dead, which in true Walking Dead style is in many ways devastating.

DEADLINE: One of the undercurrents of this last season, certainly these final episodes, has been Judith. In this episode in particular, you know, you start off yet again with another one of those kind of retrospective looks that you’ve done throughout this season, but we leave it with her fate in jeopardy and what’s going to happen to her, which is kind of a classic Walking Dead way to go. Why did you make that decision with Judith and what’s the emotional impact that it may or may not have going into the finale?

KANG: There were some different iterations of these voice overs, I’ll tell you.

DEADLINE: Really?

KANG: Yes, there’s a lot of things that we discussed and there was actually a different concept, which I won’t say now because it would spoil something, but at the end of the day, like when we went into post, it felt like Judith was the right character because there’s such an importance to this kind of throughline of what is the world going to look like for the next generation? Also like for that next generation, what do we want the world to look like, and do we have a say in that? Is there anything that we can do? And I think that that is true to the spirit of the comic, even if it is not like literally what the end of the comic is, because so many of the pieces on the chessboard of the show are different.

But there is this spirit of like how do we fight the fights we have to fight so that we’re improving things so that our children have a chance to live some kind of life? How do we not destroy each other in the process? How do we like look for a future and not just have just complete lack of hope about the present?

DEADLINE: Angela, are we talking about America 2022 or we talking about The Walking Dead?

KANG: Well, there’s that too, isn’t there, because remember the end of the comics was written pretty recently, and so Robert is like, there are things that are bouncing back and forth that have to do with the world that we actually live in.

Also, Robert is a parent of children, you know, that are still relatively young, so I think that it is something that is a bizarro mirror of the problems and the questions that our society is facing and asking ourselves. I do think whenever we get into the stuff with the children, there is a particular resonance, and you know, we’d even talked about it in the writers’ room when Robert Kirkman used to be with us a lot. He was like, you know, a lot of this stuff I write in this comic, it’s because these are the thoughts I was having as my kid was like two years old, three years old, and I’m just seeing, like, the world burning around us. Like, I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but it’s just really interesting.

So, it felt right to have Judith be a part of that, and for her thinking and her thoughts that sort of mirror the things that her parents had thought about, that her brother thought about, be an important part of this going into the finale, because you know, there’s this cliffhanger of what is her fate, but there’s also just this very simple emotional level thing of if you’re Daryl, here is this child who he’s helped care for since she was born.

DEADLINE:  Well, she literally refers to as Daddy.

KANG: Yeah, who she literally like, in her moment of need, feels that she might be in Daddy’s arms. And he feels like, I have failed her. I have failed Rick and Michonne. I have to save her. So, I think that that bond between those two has given us so much really beautiful story, and we wanted to lean into that for the final episode.

DEADLINE: One week out, what can you tell us about the finale?

KANG: The finale, I think just everybody should be prepared for a really emotional ride. It’s a roller coaster and…

DEADLINE: Any surprises?

KANG: Definitely surprises. I think there’s some surprises in there, and it’s also just incredible performances by our cast, like just some of the best work that some of them have done on the show, and that’s saying a lot because there’s such incredible acting from our cast like on a regular basis.

DEADLINE: Scott, are we going to see some old faces in the finale like Andrew Lincoln or Danai Gurira?

GIMPLE: I mean I’m not going to commit to that, but I’ll commit to the first part Are we going to see some surprises, which is a wholly unsatisfying answer, yes. Yes, we will surprise you. I hope that any surprise we might have is about just achieving the emotional sort of conclusion to the show.

DEADLINE: And will the finale set up the spinoffs or are they separate beasts?

KANG: It’s a little of both. The approach we took was like we’ve got to close this chapter in some way, but it’s closing a chapter with leaving a door open. But that said, I believe…well, I know in one case, like, without saying too much, the Daryl spinoff is going to start with like a big twist, and I’m pretty sure Maggie/Negan does too, so it’s not necessarily going to be exactly what you expect from this to that.

DEADLINE: My understanding is that the spinoffs occur after what is the end of TWD the mother show. They’re not alternative universes, they’re not side stories of, oh, this is what happened when Daryl went away for several years and got a dog.

GIMPLE: They aren’t that. I mean I won’t get into it in my circumspect fashion, but a couple of things in the story may be parallel because of certain narrative reasons.

However, it isn’t like, oh, The Walking Dead you watched was totally different or something like that if you didn’t know it. You’re right. They’re different stories featuring characters you love. My goal and Angela’s goal for The Walking Dead was to give the audience a sense of completion, a satisfying ending, but Dominic, you’re right. It is a different ending. It is not as conclusive as say a Six Feet Under.

I look upon it as this incredible, exciting, intense, thematic conclusion to The Walking Dead story. Even in that conclusion, yeah, we’re tipping the hat towards the future a little bit. But emotionally it’s all Walking Dead.

DEADLINE: I’ve talked to Angela before about how it feels to see this all conclude, at least in the sense of the mother show. How is it for you, with all the different roles you played over the years, and to have been the showrunner when the show was so big it regularly beat the NFL?

GIMPLE: It’s been unbelievable. Actually, it’s hit me a lot harder than I thought it would I sort of figured out why over the last few months. Before I was showrunner, the throttle that’s just opened as a writer / producer, I was giving everything to the show. Then as a showrunner I was like holy crap, I have to give even more. Okay. I guess I’ll do that. Just every moment was about fine tuning the work, the writing, the editing. It was about shooting in rural Georgia, and it was about conversation on conversation, meeting on meeting, writing, writing, writing.

The intensity of those five seasons did not afford me much time to look up and soak it in and revel in it or enjoy it. I was sweating the labels off cans. It was all consuming. I wish now that I had had a moment to soak that in and take a moment to recognize it at the time.

DEADLINE: Without sounding too clueless, why?

GIMPLE: Because now it’s such a different world, and I just didn’t have the presence of mind or the time to just recognize what an unbelievable situation we were in. Let’s even take it one step further. It’s mind blowing that we got people to go to a place in their home at an appointed time together to watch something. You know what I mean?

With streaming it’s like they could be in their car. They could be in line. They could be on their couch. They could be anywhere, and it could be anytime. But when we started in 2010, and for years afterwards, it was Sunday at 9 that everybody was watching. I mean that makes my mind melt. That we influenced people’s geographic behavior and that so many people were sharing something at the very same time, at the very same moment.

What’s funny is this time of year, Dominic, November 10, this is right around the time you would be wiped out or we’d be rapping out the show. Every time this time of year it’s like how the hell did we get here? The leaves would be changing colors in Atlanta and there was always such a feeling of satisfaction. Now it’s like 10 times as heavy. I miss it now and I regret not being more present for it, but I’m very proud of the work that came out of not being present. So, I’ll take it.

DEADLINE: We’ve talked about it a bit before, but I wonder, knowing the spinoffs were coming, and their presence being made public near the beginning of Season 11, which reveals in a sense, that Daryl, Maggie and Negan survive, did that change in any way the trajectory of the way you wanted to end TWD?

KANG: The interesting thing is we knew about the, at least like the first Daryl and then Carol spinoff fairly early when we were working on the season because we started working on this season all the way back at the end of 2019 but really the beginning of 2020, then sort of had to switch gears for a while because of the pandemic and all of that that happened. Yet, because we knew that piece of the puzzle, we were able to sort of think about how the story builds out. But, of course, some circumstances changed there, then somewhere along the way we knew that Maggie and Negan were going to get a spinoff too.

There’s some things that we might have done differently even just knowing that, but I think like the thing that we would lean on is like there’s always emotional jeopardy for those characters. You don’t know what’s going to happen to the people around them. You don’t know what they’re going to leave this show grappling with, so that’s kind of the approach that we took

And you know, like we as the creatives, we have like no say over when things are announced. I mean, sometimes we can like put in our two cents, but you know, there’s reasons why things are announced when they’re announced. Some of the announcements took me and actors by surprise, which that’s no secret, like Jeffrey has alluded to that.

DEADLINE: In fact, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has been very straightforward about how he was a more than little pissed off that the spinoffs got announced before the show ended. What challenges has that presented for you Scott, because you’re managing the evolution and the transition onward into those shows….

GIMPLE: I would say this, though I might not put it the same way Jeffrey puts it and both of us have our different styles, I will just say I sympathized a great deal with Mr. Morgan’s assessment. You know me, I’ve been frustrating you for years with saying so little. So, that was a difficulty, and I would have preferred keeping that under wraps and having this explosion of announcements right afterwards.

But in the same respect, we do have to make them. People having been seeing Jeffrey and Lauren running around New Jersey. Obviously, I’m crazy enough to have announced a sitcom between them and that’s what we’re working on. But I will say it created a really intense challenge. It has to be good regardless and not, more than anything.

DEADLINE: What about the challenges as chief content officer managing this expanding universe, which has really taken off in recent years?

GIMPLE: I mean one of the biggest things that I’ve done because Fear the Walking Dead when I started working on that with Andrew Meehan or World Beyond with Matt Negrete, or Tales of the Walking Dead with Channing Powell, having been there as a showrunner, I support them. Meaning I’m there as I guess something like a coach, but also trying to help them tell their story.

I want it all to connect and I certainly don’t want it to contradict, but they all have different voices, and I want to support those voices. I bring up certain moments, and certainly I straight up pitch dialogue and gags and scenes and help craft the stories, but I air on the side of all the showrunners. I was lucky enough to do it, and I want to give them the opportunity to do it. There are occasions when we don’t agree and sometimes, we go with my way but most of the time I really try to air on the side of them.

DEADLINE:  Looking back over that landscape now, with the spinoffs being made public somewhat prematurely in some people’s minds, how has it all fallen into place, if it has in your opinion?

GIMPLE: Some of the things that I was planning in the future got accelerated. The way that we looked at it, I talked with Angela and it’s critical for me to facilitate Angela’s vision was how do we conclude this story of The Walking Dead. These other spin-offs are different stories. They have different themes, and they go to different places. The history of the show is valuable to each of these, but it just isn’t that continuing story, as you’ll see.

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