When The Walking Dead arrives for Season 8, we will have all aged another six months, but that's not something that people will likely get excited about. However, one reason we can be enthused is the show will be giving at least three more characters a bit more to do, with actors Steven Ogg, Katelyn Nacon and Pollyanna McIntosh all getting promoted from recurring actors to series regulars. Where Simon's mustache goes, we follow!
Considering Season 7 just ended a couple of weeks ago, The Walking Dead has not been oozing news about the upcoming season, but the one thing that everyone knows is that the comic book's All Out War storyline is going down. With all the characters that died in the past 16 episodes, it makes sense that The Walking Dead needs to get other survivors to the narrative forefront, and in a way that doesn't involve introducing another 17 new communities full of rambunctious folks.
Of the newly promoted cast members (as confirmed to CinemaBlend by AMC), the most intriguing is Steven Ogg, whose second banana Savior Simon has been both as heinously charming and uncomfortably menacing as the big bad Negan himself. Ogg brings his A-game to every performance, so it'll be interesting to see him take on a larger piece of the war-torn pie in Season 8. I want to see him get into a physical brawl, since he towers over so many other characters.
Next up, we have Katelyn Nacon, who plays teenaged orphan Enid. It also makes sense for Enid to get a bigger boost in Season 8, since she's been around since Season 6 and has served mostly tertiary roles in other characters' stories without much of her own narrative to chew on. One would assume her storyline will play heavily into whatever Carl's got going on next, but considering she's living at Hilltop as Maggie's quasi-surrogate daughter, that might make for a mid-distance relationship.
Enid doesn't have a direct comic book counterpart, making it slightly harder to predict exactly where her story will go. However, she seems to be a proper way to carry over some of Comic Sophia's future arcs, so perhaps fans would be wise to look there for clues about Enid's later storyline.
And then there's Pollyanna McIntosh as villainous leader Jadis, whose limited presence in Season 7 came to a bullet-spewing head in the finale when it was revealed she'd betrayed the super-gullible Rick and ratted him out to Negan, kicking that first big battle off and sealing Sasha's fate. Once again, I've got no confused looks, as Jadis was already likely going to play a bigger role in the All Out War, since she and many of her Scavenger compatriots escaped Alexandria (via smoke bombs) without paying the ultimate price for their backstabbing.
That said, I might have assumed Jadis would go out early in the season to save showrunner Scott Gimple the need to bring all those Scavengers out on a regular basis. Perhaps Jadis will get separated from her loyal and smelly flock, allowing her more screen time without the need to promote anyone else in her group.
With a premiere that will supposedly go all out in marking The Walking Dead's 100th episode, Season 8 will hit AMC at some point in October. Until then, head to our midseason premiere schedule and our summer TV guide to discover what will be shambling across your TVs in the coming months.
