Angela Kang and Greg Nicotero discuss how much detail went into The Walking Dead series finale while acknowledging that an entire show will often be remembered by that last episode
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
For better or worse, long running TV series are often most remembered for how they end.
There are series like Breaking Bad that go out on top with a finale that puts an exclamation point on an incredible run while others such as Game of Thrones end up with a much maligned conclusion that leave audiences angry and upset after investing so much time in a show.
With the last episodes of The Walking Dead kicking off Sunday night on AMC, the executive producers behind the series understood from the start of the final season how important it was to reach a satisfying end to the show.
While The Walking Dead will carry on beyond the main show with several spinoff series already in the works, current showrunner Angela Kang still felt a real obligation to reach a satisfying conclusion when the writers and directors were plotting out these last episodes after 11 seasons.
“I think any time you are tasked with ending a story — and this is true for any show I think — everyone wants to stick the landing,” Kang told Nerdcore Movement at San Diego Comic Con. “But I know particularly with us, it’s been something so important to our fans, our community and us, too.
“We’re all passionate about this show. We love this show. We love each other so we want to do it well, do it right. I hope we’ve done that. We’ve just been working on the post production processes for the finale, which Greg [Nicotero] directed and co-wrote. I hope the audience will go along on the ride with us.”
Greg Nicotero, who has been with The Walking Dead since the very beginning, definitely understands the weight that’s carried by a series finale but especially for a show like this one that has such a passionate and loyal fanbase.
It’s no easy task to sum up 11 seasons and 169 episodes with a single hour of television but Nicotero acknowledged that is exactly what was expected of them when they first broke ground on the finale.
“It’s definitely a challenge,” Nicotero said. “Other shows you’re talking about Game of Thrones had [eight] seasons, Breaking Bad had six seasons. 11 seasons, our story we continue to evolve. The story really did change. The exciting thing for me after season 1 is finally everybody else catches up to me and realizes how cool zombies are. I grew up in the George Romero world with Dawn of the Dead, that was sort of my gospel.
“Frank Darabont used to say to me the show was always about survival. He had always wanted to do a zombie apocalypse story. We had talked about something years before The Walking Dead had even been talked about and it was sort of imagining heaven. Putting the ensemble cast together with Sarah [Wayne Callies] and Jon [Bernthal] and Steven [Yuen] and Melissa [McBride] and Norman [Reedus] and the show certainly has evolved since then but we definitely felt like we had an obligation to make sure that we stuck the landing.”
There’s no underestimating the pressure that comes along with a series finale of this magnitude after The Walking Dead reigned near the top of the cable ratings for the past decade.
Nicotero says that’s something that was addressed both in the writer’s room and once production started on the final season because they all felt a certain responsibility to end the show in the right way.
While The Walking Dead has loosely followed a roadmap set up by the original comic book that ended back in 2019, the TV series has always featured many characters and storylines that never appeared in the source material and that allowed them to veer in new directions that truly set the show apart.
Add to that, The Walking Dead has also been forced to adapt and change over the years — like when series stars Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira abruptly left the show, which took a pair of beloved characters off the canvas despite the importance both were supposed to play all the way to the final frame.
That only makes the job of the writers, actors and producers that much harder going into the series finale but Nicotero promised it’s something everybody involved with the show took very seriously.
“That was very prominent in our meeting with all the actors and crew when we were on set, we don’t want to screw this up because all eyes genuinely end up on the last episode,” Nicotero said. “You talk about Seinfeld, you talk about MASH, you talk about all these great shows that we love and most of the time, the historical relevance is judged on the last episode.
“So we really struggled and agonized and buckled in to make sure that it served the fans of the show. The moments that I shot with each of these people serves their characters, that really was the heart of the show.”
The Walking Dead returns for the final set of episodes on Sunday night at 9 p.m. on AMC and look for the full recap each week on Nerdcore Movement.
