There’s no denying the cultural impact The Walking Dead has had across the world, collecting fans from various countries and becoming one of the biggest television shows on the planet. With that success comes a lot of expectation and, according to those who work on the series, it’s not going to slow in its ambitions anytime soon.
Credit: AMC
Speaking at the Dolby Theatre for PaleyFest, showrunner Scott Gimple teased the future of the show. He said: “[The future of the series] focuses on Eugene’s shorts… No, the end of this season is very much the end of a chapter. It’s very much a conclusion that promises this gigantic, epic tale to come.
“The first episode [of Season 8] is, I think, less about [the fact] that we reached 100 episodes; it’s more about setting up the next 100 episodes.”
The comments will certainly come as a welcome surprise to the biggest fans of the show, who may have been thinking those behind the series could now be chatting about bringing TWD to a close. If we’re only at the most halfway through the story they want to tell, there’s a lot more to come from the world’s most famous zombie apocalypse.
In saying that, ratings earlier this season were the lowest in four years at one point. If TWD is running out of steam, can it really survive to tell another 100 episodes’ worth of material?
With fans split as to whether the current seventh season is a success or a failure, the series is going to have to do more than ever before to impress when Season 7 wraps up in three weeks’ time. We’re expecting big things.
The Walking Dead continues Sundays in the US on AMC and Mondays in the UK on FOX.
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