Some spoilers ahead for the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead.
Now that Season 6 of The Walking Dead is back to doing the damn thing with giant massacres and a grinning Abraham, fans have new things to talk about, and the first chunk of the season can settle into the past. Moving forward, there’s one thing that we hopefully never have to worry about again: showrunner Scott Gimple making it look like someone is dead when they’re not. According to Chandler “Ol’ Bandage Eye” Riggs:
There's not going to be another fake-out, like you believe a character is dead and they come back. And it’s like, ‘Just kidding!’ That’s not going to happen again. No way. I do think there are some big and exciting moments, and they're going to shock a lot of people.
And so now we know that these big and exciting moments are going to be more straightforward, unless Gimple and co-creator Robert Kirkman fooled Riggs into fooling us by saying that. The well goes deep, man, probably all the way to the White House!
When Glenn’s “Is He/Isn’t He?” quasi-arc (or lack thereof, I guess) was being conceived as a way to dramatically utilize the fractured structure of the first 8 episodes, I can’t imagine the writers anticipated the massive blowback from fans that the gimmick received, regardless of what their intentions were as far as “fooling” people went. Gimple defends the approach, while actor Steven Yeun understands both sides of the issue. Riggs, on the other hand, is apparently fully behind the assertion that it was a big “Gotcha!” moment. I can get behind that transparency.
It’s extremely likely that Gimple wouldn’t have gone back to this kind of a scenario anyway, especially not immediately, but it’s still good to hear Riggs so assuredly say that something like that won’t be happening again. Except, you know, the midseason premiere did make it look like Glenn would die for that couple of seconds before Abraham brought out the firepower. As well, I’m pretty sure Chandler Riggs isn’t the first person that Gimple calls when he makes decisions about what he wants to do with each character. So it’s possible/probable the actor is only speaking from a limited place, and that Season 8 will bamboozle everyone by making us think that Daryl got blown up in his house, but he was actually able to slip out through a mousehole.
Also, check out how Riggs describes Negan, the psychotic and charming murderer that will completely disrupt the show’s status quo, to Huffington Post.
Like in the comic, it's very frightening. He's a huge annoyance to everyone because he’ll just take all your stuff. I feel like it's going to be the same way for the show. He's just going to be annoying because there's nothing you can do to stop him, and he'll gladly kill anyone.
Frightening gets one mention, while some version of “annoying” gets two mentions. Sounds like an answer Carl would give. And considering Carl and Negan will bond in a way as time goes on, I’m eager to see how Riggs’ answers about the character differ from other cast members.
Without any more fakeout deaths to speak of, The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC.
