The Walking Dead spoilers are below.
When the credits started rolling for The Walking Dead’s midseason premiere, fans had a lot to think about. But rather than dragging out the immediate aftermath, the show will jump forward in time a bit for Episode 9, and audiences will see Daryl and Rick going on an excursion together for the first time in ages. Andrew Lincoln, remarking that his and Reedus’ characters are only compatible because of the post-apocalyptic world, shared what we can expect to see.
In any other situation, I would be arresting this motherfucker. And these guys are stuck together. And that was the fun of this episode — you see a completely different side of both of these guys. It was different and strange and it will be a little bit unsettling for the audience, but it is much lighter episode — remarkably considering the episode before it is hardcore. But I think it was great to play.
Lincoln obviously wasn’t going to go into details about every little thing that Rick and Daryl get into on their road trip, but he offers up some interesting descriptors there. It would have been extremely hard (without killing off the entire cast) for the upcoming episode to be darker than the previous one, so it’s nice that it can even be called lighthearted, and not just “slightly less dour.” I wonder if the duo will pass up a lone survivor who holds ventriloquist acts for a bunch of rocks with faces drawn on them. That would be super lighthearted.
Rick and Daryl did come to different conclusions about outsiders and modern society by the time “No Way Out” ended, with Rick regaining his faith in the strength of others, while Daryl lost his optimism in rebuilding the world. Seeing their flipped attitudes alone together should make their sections of the episode feel quite unlike a lot of other recent Walking Dead sequences, especially if they get into some kind of trouble and have to decide how to handle things. (Okay, that kind of situation happens constantly, but not with this particular dynamic.) Maybe it’ll be walkers. Maybe it’ll be Saviors. Maybe it’ll be Jesus or some other new character.
Considering how emotionally fractured Rick was after seeing Carl getting shot, it’s weird that his new outlook on life has him seemingly over that event so quickly. He’s possibly seething inside, but it doesn’t sound like it, going by the pop culture comparisons the episode received. Here’s what else Lincoln told EW.
We like to call it Butch and Sundance. But the producers after a few days of filming it called it Bill and Ted’s. So I don’t know what they were seeing but what we were filming was completely different.
Nothing sounds better to me right now than having Rick and Daryl getting into a phone booth and traveling back to the time of Socrates. But that isn’t too likely. See what kind of unsettling business these rugged mofos do get into when The Walking Dead airs Sunday night on AMC.
