[h=1]Andrew Lincoln on 'The Walking Dead' Season 4 Finale: I Asked If We Might Be Going a Little Too Far[/h] By Kimberly Potts 59 minutes ago Yahoo TV

Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs), Michonne (Danai Gurira), and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) in 'The Walking Dead'

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Who lives? Who dies? Who makes it to Terminus? And what is this shocking Rick Grimes storyline we're hearing so much about? "The Walking Dead" Season 4 finale is just a couple of days away, and Yahoo TV talked to series star Andrew Lincoln, Rick Grimes himself, to get the scoop on just how frightened we should be for Rick and our favorite zombie apocalypse survivors (hint: very).
We talked to Greg Nicotero earlier this week, and we're worried about Rick in this Season 4 finale.
[Laughing] Yes, and you should be, be afraid. I've just spoken to someone who's seen it... they were freaking out a bit.
We know the Claimers — Joe and his friends, who are travelling with Daryl — are on Rick's trail, and it seems pretty likely they'll meet up in the finale. What can you say about that?
Just wait, just wait. We haven't got long to go [laughing]. They meet, yeah... they would be pretty bad trackers if they didn't meet, is all I'm saying. But you never know. I've got a feeling that... well, something's going to go down, definitely. I'll say that.

[Related: Take a Bite Out of Our 'Walking Dead' Recaps]​

This is what Robert Kirkman said about the finale: "This is Rick Grimes being pushed to his absolute limit. And if you think you've seen that before, you haven't. And the Rick Grimes that comes out of this is really going to shock people."
Yeah, that's very good. I think the story this season begins with a man suppressing his brutality for the sake of his son. I don't want to give too much away, but basically, you will see a side of Rick that you haven't seen before or in a place that he goes to that he's never been before. Like most things he's driven by, it's for the sake of his son.
All I will say is that when I read [the script], I called up Scott Gimple, and I said, "Scott, we've always been incredibly responsible with where we go and the darkness and the brutality of the world that we inhabit. Do you think we may be going a little bit far on this?" He said, "No, no, not at all," and when I did it, when I did the scene, like most things Scott Gimple says, he was right, and it made complete sense. It is a definite evolution.
What was your favorite Rick moment in the second half of the season?
I loved ["After"]. I just thought it was very well drawn... and obviously for the fact that I got to lie in a bed unconscious for quite a lot of the scenes [laughing]. But I would say that I think my favorite episode, just for what happens, is the one that you haven't seen yet. Just because, it's always really exciting to play... it's such a privilege to play this character, and certainly to play it for so long. You get to explore and then live with him in so many different ways. And when something happens that changes him irrevocably, it's an exciting moment. You start going, "Oh, I'm no longer this guy anymore, I'm this guy." That's what happens this Sunday.
Are you excited for fans to see it, and then to start filming Season 5 in a few weeks?
Oh, yeah. Everybody's going crazy. All the people that are still alive are texting each other [laughing]. It's an amazing time. Just because it so beautifully synchronizes... the finale and then suddenly the emails start coming in and everybody starts getting ready [for Season 5]. It's particularly exciting to start up Season 5, because of where we leave Season 4. It's a really thrilling place.

[Related: 'The Walking Dead' Season 4 Finale Teaser Poster: Will Maggie Survive?]​

Did you feel Season 4 was a different show? And in a good way if so?
Oh, hugely. And I think it was good. I think different is always good. No, that's not true... that's a flat out lie. You can have different bad. But I think that changing the show up is essential. Just because we want to keep ahead of the audience, and we want to keep people on the balls of their feet and not know where we're going to go.
For that reason alone, I think the writers did a magnificent job this season. I loved the storytelling. I thought it was slow in parts, but for a reason. I think it was different and needed to be different. Maybe that's the ace we've got up our sleeve, the fact that we can just smash it all up and start it all over again.
Were you excited to learn some of the character backstories?
It's so good. It's so exciting to go, "Oh my God, the Michonne story." All the little things that they've added in, that you are being drip fed about pasts and relationships and who these people are and their secrets. There's nothing more satisfying as an actor, I think, than playing a secret, holding onto a secret for so long.
Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs), and Michonne (Danai Gurira) in 'The Walking Dead'

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You mentioned Michonne... she, Rick, and Carl have formed a family unit, and not just because they're together in the second half of the season. They've been building to that. Is Michonne the person that Rick most trusts with Carl? And not just because she's the only other person with them right now, but in general?
The funny thing is that I think he sees a relationship that Carl doesn't have with anybody else. Carl is a teenager now. There are certain things that a boy can't say to his father... there's a lightness that [Carl and Michonne] bring out in each other that is so of the old world, that is so important to life. Otherwise, what's the point? I think that Rick identifies that as a hugely important part of their relationship. But also, she signifies a maternal presence, maybe a sisterly presence. She's a sort of go between. Also, you're right. She's great insurance. If I die, I trust that she's a warrior. She's a survivor. It is a kind of insurance policy, as well.
One of the best moments of the entire series so far was the end of "After," when Michonne finds Rick and Carl in the house, and Rick sees her at the door and tells Carl, "It's for you."
I know. I'm with you. I love it. It's rare that you get the chance to have that levity on our show. It's a lifeline for this guy. It's funny, I was signing something at a convention, and the person said, "Sign your favorite line from this season," and I just said, "It's for you." They asked what episode that was from, and I said, "You haven't seen it yet. Wait." That was Robert Kirkman. Robert Kirkman wrote that episode, and I thought he did a beautiful job.
"The Walking Dead" Season 4 finale airs Sunday, March 30 at 9 p.m. on AMC

 

[h=1]‘Walking Dead’ star dishes on shocking Season 4 finale[/h] By Larry Getlen
March 30, 2014 | 12:31am
Modal Trigger
Rick, Michonne and Carl flee a herd of walkers in the fourth season finale of "The Walking Dead." Photo: AMC

If you’re setting your TiVo or DVR to record the Season 4 finale of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” be sure to give yourself a several-minute cushion at the end, because you do not want to miss the very last line of the episode.
The Post spoke to Andrew Lincoln, who plays the survivors’ unofficial leader, Rick Grimes, as well as executive producer Greg Nicotero, and learned that the very last line of this game-changing season will change the game yet again, launching the first season-ending cliff-hanger in the show’s history.
“Traditionally, when we [end a season], it has a wrap-up,” says Nicotero. “At the end of Season 2, we saw the prison. At the end of Season 3, we saw them bringing people from Woodbury to the prison. It all had this resolve to it. In this episode, there’s a line that a character says, the last line of the episode, that’s probably the first time we ended [a season] on a ‘what’s gonna happen next?’ moment.”
But based on what Lincoln and Nicotero shared with us, that’s not the biggest shock in store tonight.
According to Lincoln, something happens to Rick that, even accounting for the deaths of his wife and (he believes) his infant daughter, will be the most brutal thing he has endured in the show’s history.
Modal TriggerAndrew Lincoln on set — still in the prison — in an episode earlier this season.Photo: AMC

“My car explodes if I say anything [more],” jokes the British actor, before finding a way to open up without revealing more than he should.
“I will say that something happens in the finale that when I read it, I called Scott Gimple, the showrunner, because we’ve always been incredibly responsible with the violence in this show. And I just wanted to ask, ‘Is this a step too far?’”
For some fans of the show, though, the prospect of any action at all will be welcome.
This year, AMC divided Season 4 into eight-episode halves, and each episode featured only a few survivors; ultimately, none of the cast appeared in more than half the episodes.
For Lincoln, this format afforded him time to spend with his family. Once shooting began without him, though, he quickly changed his tune.
“I got incredibly bored and wanted to be back on set, so I don’t think I was much comfort to my family,” says Lincoln, 40, who lives on a farm just outside of London with his wife, Gael Anderson (daughter of Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson) and their two kids, Matilda, 6, and Arthur, 4. “I missed the shoot. I missed being on set.”
As for the story format itself, while some disagree — New York magazine headlined one of its recent weekly recaps of the show, “Man, The Walking Dead is Boring This Season” — Lincoln believes that the slower pace helped flesh out the show’s characters.
Episode 14, in which Carol (Melissa McBride) was forced to kill a young girl, is a case in point. “You think it’s one thing, then it turns that inside out and rips your heart out. It’s astonishingly bold,” says Lincoln.
“There is a necessity to make this an action-packed thrill ride, but you need to do the footwork in character development and story to earn those rewards. There has to be light and shade, otherwise it would be the other way around — is it too bloodthirsty, is it too gory, is it too action-packed? Where’s the character development?”
While Lincoln has enjoyed reading the scripts to see where the show was headed, he let The Post in on a surprising fact about him and “The Walking Dead.” Despite being its star, Lincoln has never seen even one episode of the show that has made him a very recognizable man.
“I hear it’s very good,” jokes Lincoln, who prefers not to watch himself act, and therefore hasn’t in 15 years.
“It’s not an enjoyable experience for me,” he says. “After working for about eight years, I realized that watching myself made me self-conscious. So I stopped.”
(Lincoln has been asked to provide DVD commentary for Episode 14, so he will soon watch his show for the first time. Of the other pop culture touchstone Lincoln was in — the polarizing 2003 Christmas film, “Love Actually,” in which he played a man in love with his best friend’s wife — Lincoln attended the premiere, but says he “watched the other stories but kept my head down during mine, like a weirdo.”)
But while Lincoln may have a short embarrassment fuse, he’s not above toying with others — namely, his castmate Norman Reedus, who plays the show’s hardened country boy, Daryl Dixon.

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When Lincoln and Reedus recently flew to Tokyo for show promotion, Lincoln engineered a prank where a fan with one arm and no legs — Nick Santonastasso, 17, a Vine star thanks to pranks where he scares people while made up like a zombie — hid in a room-service cart in full zombie makeup, then jumped out to scare Reedus.
“My big concern is that I’ve started a war. It’s on,” says Lincoln. “I’m living in fear — not that I’m gonna get killed [on the show], but I fear Norman’s wrath more than anything else. Every moment that is not a prank, he’s planning one.”
As Lincoln keeps looking over his shoulder, though, Rick’s harsher realities illustrate why Lincoln loves this show overall and tonight’s finale in particular, in their demonstrations of how resilient people can be in even the toughest of circumstances.
“The extraordinary thing about human beings is their capacity to heal in real life, and that’s the greatest story we’re telling,” Lincoln says.
“The thing that happens [tonight addresses] that question of, can we ever come back, and can we ever be the same people we once were. Certainly, [the question of] how Rick lives from this point onwards is resolved.”

 

It is Season Finale time and you know what that means: time for another chat with the boss, Robert Kirkman! Keep reading for all kinds of stuff, not just on this episode but Season 4 as a whole.






TheWalkingDead.com: What was the thought behind visiting the time period before Season 4, in the series of flashbacks with Hershel? Will we be lucky enough to see more Scott Wilson in upcoming episodes or do you think that kind of wraps up that period of this story?
Robert Kirkman: That was more of a story device to tie Season 4 together as one story. I think that was something Scott Gimple has brought to the show that is a really great element. There are things in episode 2 that pay off in Epiosde 14 in a big way, and the structure is meticulously worked out to the point where when you go back and watch the first episode of Season 4 you’ll be like, “Oh wow, they’re alluding to this! They’re setting this up, and that’s going to lead to this, and I can’t believe there were already hints of this happening and that happening.” It’s a really great thing to see come alive on the show, so for our finale I thought it was great that we get to see Hershel again and to see the pieces fall into place for Rick’s journey. That’s what this season is, it’s all about Rick going from this farmer—this peaceful human being who has turned away from violence and found this sanctuary—to losing that and by the end of the season becoming harsher and more violent and more deadly than he’s ever been before. It’s a tragic story, to see him lose that peace and have to turn his back on that and accept it, and I think it came together quite nicely.





TWD: In previous post-mortems, we talked about Hershel’s influence throughout the season, even after his death. Do you think this wraps up his chapter in the show? Will we see Scott Wilson again?


RK: I always love having the potential to bring these characters back. I don’t think Hershel’s influence is done at the end of this season. I think his influence will be felt throughout the entire run of the show because he was that important of a character and I think that this season proves that. Maybe we’ll see him again in another flashback or dream sequence. Although, I think that Scott Wilson might have cut that hair.





TWD: When did those flashback scenes get filmed?


RK: They were filmed when we were filming this finale, we didn’t shoot that out of order or anything. We brought Scott Wilson back and we had to tell him not to alter his appearance in any way after his death scene, which is actually a good thing because then he was able to do public appearances and be seen out in public while the beginning of Season 4 was airing and not look like he wasn’t on the show anymore. It didn’t spoil anything by people seeing him at the grocery store and taking pictures or anything.





TWD: What about the prison set? Did you have to rebuild that?


RK: If you go back and look at those scenes, we had to shoot around the parts of the prison that were destroyed, so there were key pieces of the set that were left intact after we filmed the mid-season finale to we could shoot this at the end of the season. So we knew this stuff was coming up and we were able to plan for it.





TWD: This episode we saw the controversial attempted-rape story line from the comic books. Was that hard to get approval on?


RK: There was definitely a lot of discussion. That’s a scene that was really hard for me to do in the comics, and in the actual script for that scene in the comics it says, “Don’t worry Charlie, they’re not actually going to do it, it’s going to be stopped.” Scott [Gimple] and myself and all of the producers really had to sell it to AMC just to get them on board with what it was that we were trying to do, and thankfully they were. It’s a harsh world, and I think AMC has really invested themselves in a realistic portrayal of these characters and what they would be doing in this world, and that was a part of it. So while it is definitely a difficult thing to portray, I think it’s worth it for the integrity of the show and the realism of the show to sink to these levels and do these things and do them justice.





TWD: And one of the results of that is Rick ripping someone’s throat out with his teeth… how did that discussion go?


RK: [Laughs] Rick goes a little zombie. That’s a pinnacle moment in the comic book series, seeing Rick get to that level where he’s so savage and so brutal that he is essentially behaving like a zombie. When we started off this season, Scott Gimple always knew that we were building toward that moment and that that was going to be the climax of this season. So that was another one where we definitely had to go over how we were shooting that, what we were going to see and what was implied. Having Michelle MacLaren to direct that episode really helped us because she’s such a visionary director and has done so many amazing episodes on Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and really is an all-star director, so having her on board for this episode really helped us pull that scene off and do it right.





TWD: Were there any standards and practices concerns in terms of having that done to a human instead of a zombie?


RK: Sure, there are more restrictions for human-on-human violence rather than human-on-zombie, but how it works is we usually run through things meticulously before we shoot them, and it’s literally things like, “You can show a tooth going into human flesh for certain amount of centimeters for a certain number of seconds and that’s okay.” So we go into it knowing exactly where the edges of the envelope are and how close we can push them. We know what the parameters are and we do skirt the edges of that as much as possible.





TWD: And AMC is different than the networks, right?


RK: I think that anyone who watches the show sees that we get a tremendous amount of leeway as far as graphic violence is concerned, and the show is better for it.





TWD: There’s a strange memorial room at Terminus. What’s that all about?


RK: There’s a big story to Terminus. There’s a very long and involved way that Terminus came about, and that memorial is a big part of it. It’s what these people have lived through and what’s happened to them and what’s built them into what they are, which will be revealed in Season 5. There are a lot of hints when you watch this episode closely of what’s to come in Season 5, so I would definitely urge everyone to watch this episode multiple times and try to pick out the things we’re teasing because there’s a lot to find.





TWD: Will comic book fans have a hand up on that?


RK: You’ll definitely have a better sense of where we’re going if you’re a diehard comic book fan because there are always certain hints that pop out to you more if you’ve read the comics, but as the comic fans know there’s never any kind of clear indication of how we’re going to adapt a story. So even if we are moving into a storyline that’s very recognizable from the comics, we could be doing it in a completely different way.





TWD: Are you allowed to talk more about Gareth, the super friendly leader of the Terminus group.


RK: Gareth is definitely not another Governor, he’s a far different character with a far different path that we’re going to be going down. I will say that he is a version of a comic book character, as Scott Gimple says he’s a remix of something we did in the comics, so there are elements of the comics that will be brought into the show through Gareth in a different way. I would expect a lot more out of that character when we come back.





TWD: And where’s Beth!?


RK: I don’t know! She got taken, she’s not back yet… I can say that Terminus has a lot of signs out there and it’s certainly possible that all kinds of different people out there could make their way to Terminus in some way, so maybe Beth shows up to Terminus in Season 5… maybe not. I think I can say that Beth’s story is not over. We’ll see her again, maybe in Season 5, maybe not.





TWD: And Tyreese and Carol are still out there somewhere?


RK: They’re definitely still out there. I’m hoping that that’s something people notice. People have reunited in that train car at the end, but Tyreese, Carol and Judith are still out there. I think we’re gonna go in a pretty unexpected direction with that one.





TWD: It was also interesting that this was the first time Rick met Abraham, but it was just super quick at the very end of the episode.


RK: There’s definitely a lot of stuff teased and a lot to do when we come back for Season 5.





TWD: This is a wrap on Season 4. It had two very distinct halves, more so than Seasons 2 or 3. What are your overall feelings on 4b and Season 4 in general?


RK: I think that 4b was a great way to shake up the characters and that as promised we certainly know more about all of the individual characters than we did when we started. I think it’s great that we now have much more insight into who Daryl is as a character, and Carol, and the different things going on with Rick and Carl, and we know so much more about Michonne’s backstory, and I think 4b was key in getting all of the characters to where we want them to be moving into Season 5 and beyond. We’ve definitely laid the groundwork for doing some really interesting things with these characters and will.


Another thing I think is awesome about Season 4b is that we didn’t lose any of our major characters. Our cast, to a certain extent, going into Season 5 is largely the same as going into the back half of Season 4, and I think that’s very important. This is not a show that is about shocking deaths and who’s gonna die next—





TWD: Uh…


RK: [Laughs] I mean, it is to a certain extent, but that’s not all this show is. Having a block of eight episodes where it wasn’t hinged upon crazy character deaths. I mean, we certainly turned a lot of heads with Lizzie and Mika, but there wasn’t any monumental status quo-shaking death, like a Hershel death or a Governor death, in these episodes. It’s important to demonstrate that the show can stand on its own. It also probably means there are going to be a lot of deaths in Season 5, so look out, but I think it was an important stance to take for now.


For Season 4 as a whole, I really feel like it’s the strongest season we’ve done to date. I think that now that it’s over, people can see that it was a larger story with a lot of planning that went into it, and that the stories wove together better than they have in seasons past, and I think Season 4 is a good indication of the kind of show we’ll be doing from hereon out. It’s got a really strong cliffhanger and I think the wait between Season 4 and Season 5 is going to be the most painful wait between seasons that we’ve had, and I think it’s gonna pay off in a big way because we’re working on Season 5 now, and I can say that it is turning out to be pretty awesome. I’m really excited about everything coming up and can’t wait to share it with everyone else in October.








And with that, we close out the season! Thanks to Robert for yammerin’ with us every week! Can’t wait for Season 5!

 

March 31, 2014 9:00 AM
Walking Dead Post Mortem: Robert Kirkman Shares ‘Scary’ Terminus Intel, Talks ‘Difficult’ Carl Scene, Promises Quick Answers In Season 5



By Michael Ausiello
The Walking Dead closed out its fourth season Sunday with a doozy of a cliffhanger and a fair number of unanswered questions. To help make sense of the grim climax — and prepare us for what lies ahead in Season 5 — TVLine rang up series creator Robert Kirkman.


TVLINE | Are the citizens of Terminus cannibals?
[Laughs] There are a great many number of possibilities for that storyline and who those characters are and what they’re doing, and that is certainly one of them. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, but I can neither confirm nor deny anything at this time. Who the people of Terminus are and what their deal is will be dealt with fairly quickly when we come back for Season 5.


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TVLINE | Do you want us to be thinking that Carol and Tyreese could be in the Sloppy Joes that Mary served Rick & Co.?
[Laughs] It’s entirely possible. I’m stopping myself from making very horrible jokes. We’ll just have to see. It’s certainly fine for people to speculate.


TVLINE | Why not give us a clue about their fate, especially coming off of last week’s harrowing episode?
Seeing that group in the train car and knowing that all of those people are together and that Rick is very capable and very prepared… We kind of felt like we needed more unknowns to keep people guessing. And leaving the fate of Beth and Carol and Tyreese and Judith completely ambiguous kind of gives us that. We’ll deal with [their whereabouts] fairly quickly when we come back for Season 5. They could be in another train car. They could be in part of the barbecue, as you say. Or, maybe, they found a Denny’s and they’re just having a good time.


TVLINE | How does the Terminus situation differ from Woodbury? In each case, we have a group of people whose method of surviving poses a threat to our core characters.
Woodbury was much more of a return to civilization. It was a safe place. It had a leader who had a lot of secrets, but, on the surface, it was a place where families could live and people could survive. Terminus is not that. It’s a completely alien environment with very strange people that live in a very specific and strange way that is in no way any kind of remnant of what we knew before. They’re actually a lot more dangerous and a little bit scarier when it all comes to light.


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TVLINE | Has Daryl developed more than brotherly feelings for Beth?
It’s possible. Daryl is very protective and he’s formed very strong bonds with a lot of characters, Carol included. And now Beth. Whether or not that would eventually grow into a romantic relationship we’re keeping ambiguous, much like the relationship between Daryl and Carol was fairly ambiguous. If Beth ever comes back, hopefully, we’ll find a definitive answer to that.


TVLINE | We were reminded in the finale that Carl shot a boy who basically posed no imminent threat. Does it make Rick a hypocrite for banishing Carol for killing Karen and David, both of whom actually did pose a threat?
The situation with Carl was somewhat different. While Hershel felt like it was very definitive that the kid posed no threat, there was a little bit of ambiguity there. But, sure, there’s somewhat of a hypocritical element in Rick. I think that for all of his rules and all of his attempts at being a leader and trying to set a good example he would in a minute break the rules for Carl. He would definitely throw everything out the window for the kid’s safety — which, in a sense, is kind of what happened in the finale. He spent the whole season trying to show Carl that, “We have to retain our humanity, we have to not lose ourselves, and we have to not allow this world to darken us or steal away what it is that makes us people.” Yet, when the chips are down and he has no other recourse he loses all of that. He throws it all completely out of the window and kind of becomes an animal. When it comes to Carl there are no rules.


TVLINE | It was incredibly disturbing to see Carl almost get raped. What was the discussion like surrounding how dark to play that sequence from the comics — especially coming so soon after last week’s Lizzie horror show.
That was a tough one. That scene has always been a really difficult one. When I was writing the original comics, in the panel description for artist Charlie Adlard I [wrote], “Carl is on his back, and the guy is pulling his paints off – but don’t worry Charlie, he’s not going to get raped!” I actually included that in the panel description because it is such a heavy and dark scene, and I didn’t want Charlie to be freaking out while he was trying to draw that. But when it came time to adapt that for the show… We are trying to realistically portray the kind of things that would happen after the fall if civilization. We try not to shy away from the depths that people can sink to in various situations. It’s not like we’re portraying things that don’t, unfortunately, happen in real life. We’re not really pushing the envelope too far. It is a fine line that we’re trying to walk here, between being realistic and also being unrelentingly dark and morbid. I hope that we’re walking that line well. And I hope that people still see the entertainment value of watching these people survive. I do feel like we did push things to the edge in that episode, [but] I don’t think we went quite over the edge.


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TVLINE | When Rick had his Dirty Harry line at the end, are we to interpret that as him kind of making peace with the monster that this new world has made him?
Yeah, he’s resigned to the fact that he’s going to have to be a different person in order to survive. He’s really accepted the fact that he is that guy. He’s the guy that can take that on, that can be that leader, that can go to those levels if he needs to. Now that he knows that that’s in him, there’s a confidence to him now that he hasn’t had before. And that confidence will carry with him into Season 5 and, theoretically, get them out of that horrible situation.


TVLINE | What were you trying to convey with the Hershel flashbacks?
That was an attempt to show that this entire season has been one story, and it’s been a story of Rick’s evolution into this new darker version of himself. [We wanted] to go back and show the influence of Hershel and how important that character has been and will continue to be. And to show how far Rick has come, and emphasize what they lost and where they’re going to have to go moving forward.


TVLINE | There were no major deaths in the second half of the season, at least not on the level of a Hershel or a Lori. How come?
After a while we can fall into a trap of, “Oh, here’s the finale!” or “Here’s the episode before the finale — we’re going to be seeing some big character deaths.” We kind of recognized towards the end of Season 3 that, for our show, the most shocking thing to do, the most novel thing to do, the most unexpected thing for us would be to not kill anyone. We want to keep people guessing. We don’t want things to ever get formulaic. The character deaths in our show are never done for shock value or just to have a bit of excitement. There’s always a story purpose. And sometimes you don’t need those deaths to do that. This finale was just as impactful and dark and shocking as you need a finale to be to carry viewers over that gap between seasons.


TVLINE | Lastly, the finale was titled “A” — what does it mean?
[It refers to] Train Car A. They were put in Train Car A.

 

The Walking Dead Postmortem: Are the People of Terminus Cannibals?
Mar 31, 2014 12:00 PM ET
by Natalie Abrams


Andrew Lincoln
[WARNING: This story contains major spoilers from Sunday's The Walking Dead season finale. Read at your own risk!]
The survivors of The Walking Dead have found themselves in yet another perilous position.
During Sunday's season finale, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his small group made their way to Terminus, a community that promised safety for all those who arrived. Once the group learned just how much of a lie that was, they quickly tried to make a run for it. But they ended up being forced by Terminus leader Gareth (Andrew J. West) into a train car, where they were reunited with Glenn (Steven Yeun), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.). Suffice it to say, Gareth and the people of Terminus are not allies.
The Walking Dead: What is Terminus, really?
However, executive producer Robert Kirkman tells TVGuide.com that Gareth will not be the big bad of Season 5. In fact, Terminus will be but one stop in a season that features a variety of different locations. But who are these people really? We caught up with Kirkman and showrunner Scott Gimple to get the scoop.
The people of Terminus are totally the cannibals from the comics, right?
Robert Kirkman: Assume nothing. I will say for the record that we're not revealing that these are the cannibals or outright denying that. You should plan for a surprise when we come back for Season 5.
Scott Gimple: I don't think there's anything in Episode 16 that showed them as definitely cannibals. One could suspect, but there are no eaten parts there.
You say there's no proof, and yet there's this weird candle room that could be a tribute to those they've eaten. There's another shipping container full of people who were yelling for help. They only shot at their feet in order to keep them alive, and when you arrive, there is a BBQ waiting for you that could be Beth (Emily Kinney).
Gimple: Here's an interesting exercise that we both could do and we will both fail. Having read the comic books and knowing the rhythm of the story of the comic, could we pull what we know of the comic away from our brain and would it still lead to cannibalism in this moment? There is cannibalism in a lot of zombie movies. But, especially with that room, if you're going to eat somebody, are you really going to put up a candle for them? I don't think that's what that room is about.
Kirkman: The Beth BBQ question is a big one. I've seen that a lot on Twitter. When a theory is as prevalent as that one is, it's more than likely not true. If there ever was a story line where we were going a different way and the audience seemed to be ahead of us to that point, it would be extremely unfortunate and I would certainly not feel too good about how well we're doing our jobs. Thankfully this doesn't seem to be the case.
What are you able to say about who these people really are?
Gimple: We're well into working on Season 5. The truth of what those people are about will come super quick. When people tune in in October, they're not going to have to wait a super long time to find out what they're about.
Kirkman: The big question over the hiatus is what are the various reasons that they'd want these people to be alive? What could their plans possibly be? There are some answers out there, but they may not be exactly what you think.
Gareth was a little Governor-like in his execution when it comes to being overtly nice. How similar are those two villains?
Kirkman: Not very. There are certainly some similarities, especially in this episode. But those similarities go away pretty quickly. His façade has a much more clear purpose that will be revealed in Season 5 and definitely sets him apart from The Governor in a big way. I would state emphatically that he is definitely not the villain of Season 5. I don't want anyone to get the impression that this is a Rick vs. Governor face-off. Gareth and the people of Terminus are going to be a very big threat. They're definitely going to kick Season 5 off in a big way, but the Rick Grimes that we've left this season with is not going to be allowing a Governor-like figure to be such a thorn in their side moving forward.
Gimple: This might be my own impression, but The Governor came across as a very benevolent leader and presidential. The way that I saw Gareth and the way we tried to portray Gareth, I was hoping to see him more a peer, like a regular guy, somebody who is more on Rick's level, maybe even more on Glenn's level.
We know that these people have already lied to the group, so there's no chance they could be good people, correct?
Gimple: Granted, Rick has every reason to suspect them because there were these clues, but Rick was the one that did initiate the conflict. So for the Terminans to be frightened of them and use very well-hidden security measures against them... we don't entirely know that they are bad people. We only know that they had our people's stuff and our people in a train car, which does not look good for them. We also have these hardened survivors that were out in the world and they are not out in the world. They have some place of community where they're living together and surviving. It's possible that our guys could be the bad guys.
Will Season 5 take place solely in Terminus, or will we see a variety of new places?
Kirkman: Season 5 will probably have more distinctive individual locations than we've had on the show thus far. There will be a lot of different places we explore in Season 5.
Did The Walking Dead go too far?
Rick seemed to cross over to the dark side in this episode. Will we ever see normal Rick again?
Gimple: Yes, we will see normal Rick again, but I think this will be the new normal. I don't know if Rick really lost it. If we're talking about the Claimers, he did what he had to do. Things were about to get much, much worse. The steps that he took saved Daryl (Norman Reedus), Michonne (Danai Gurira), Carl (Chandler Riggs) and himself. The next day, when he's sitting with Daryl, you see a Rick who is very much coming to terms with those two sides of his personality. He can still have humanity and be a father and friend, and yet he can also be the guy who tears out somebody's throat with his teeth to save them. He's not going to be tortured about it. He's not going to wring his hands or walk around consumed by guilt. He's going to accept that this is the world he lives in, and it doesn't mean the end of him. It just means that he has different dimensions now.
And he has Michonne as his support system.
Kirkman: These are two characters that, at the beginning of the season, felt somewhat alone. That caused a bond between them to form. They both have a very unique relationship with Carl that has also brought them closer. This relationship could obviously go in some interesting directions moving forward.
Carl worries that he's become a monster. Will it only get worse from here?
Gimple: The thing with that moment is you see a kid with a conscience, a kid who is worried about his humanity, which is not who he was at the end of Season 3. We're seeing a great deal of development with this kid as far as Rick's success in making sure that he had a conscience. So, however tragic that might feel and however pained Carl is, there's something beautiful in the fact that he is worried about it. If he wasn't worried, that would be scary.
Carol and Tyreese were not in that train car, but we did hear other people screaming from a different shipping container. Is there a possibility that they could already be in Terminus, or are they the group's only hope for escape?
Gimple: Is there a possibility that they are at Terminus? Absolutely. From a story standpoint, their story for this season did end in Episode 14. Of course, they're a big part of next season. It's not the last we've seen of Carol and Tyreese by a long shot. The last we left them, they were headed towards Terminus. Whether they're there or not, it was important to me to really end their story on the emotional side rather than the geographical ending.
Kirkman: Rick seems confident at the end of the episode that they don't need a best hope. The location of Tyreese, Carol and Judith, and Beth for that matter, is purposefully left up in the air. It's something that we'll be revealing when we come back for Season 5. We left that open-ended for a reason.
The camera did linger on powdered milk outside the train car, which could be for baby Judith.
Gimple: It very well could be.
With so many leaders within the train car, will the group be able to work together to survive?
Gimple: Although it was a cliff-hanger, there was an emotional resolution for Rick. For him to be the guy that says they're screwing with the wrong people, that means he achieved an evolution from when he was a farmer. They are captured in a place that is very secure by a seemingly well-organized group of well-armed people. And yet, Rick has the utmost confidence that they can get out of this very impossible situation. Rick has a great deal of power at his disposal now, and that will be recognized by the rest of the group.
How will Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) feel about that, though?
Kirkman: Rick's leadership role is dependent on keeping his son and those around him safe. It's not a role he necessarily desires in the way The Governor did. That could [create] some kind of working relationship with Abraham and Rick. The thing to note is that Abraham is an alpha male and clearly has a mission that he's trying to accomplish and will stop at nothing to do so. So, as long as their goals align, I could see them working together. But I could also see them being at odds in a big way.
The Walking Dead's Michael Cudlitz on Abraham Ford: "He will kill you"
Will you guys follow a trajectory similar to the comics with Eugene (Josh McDermitt)?
Gimple: We take our opportunities to change it up. We certainly might be doing it in this case. We're going to keep mixing things up for a variety of reasons. Occasionally, it's to get the same emotional feelings out of the comic without doing the comic verbatim. But we gave him a mullet, not a Mohawk, so there's some heavy duty comic stuff going on there, too.
Kirkman: The way that we've adapted the series thus far shows there is the potential for us to change the story in a big way.
Robert, you promised hope at the end of the season, but this seems pretty bleak. Where's the hope?
Kirkman: I think that ending is very hopeful. We're ending things with a very capable Rick that has a confidence we haven't seen before. Things are looking very bleak, but it appears that Rick already has a plan. In the world of The Walking Dead, that's as close to an uplifting moment as we can get to.
Gimple: If he had wound up there any sooner than he had, he would not have been prepared and it would've been an utterly hopeless situation. Rick does believe that they're screwing with the wrong people. He's never been more prepared to show that. And on top of that, I'd say they are all together after being scattered to the four winds. That's a remarkable thing.

 

‘The Walking Dead’: Robert Kirkman on why you need to ‘stay tuned for season 5′
by Dalton Ross | March 31 2014 — 12:00 PM EDT


Image Credit: Gene Page/AMC
[SPOILER ALERT: Read on only if you have already watched the season finale of The Walking Dead.]


The Walking Dead took its first trip to Cliffhanger City with its season 4 finale, leaving Rick Grimes and most of the group reunited in the worst of all places — locked in a train car by the baddies of Terminus. But there is hope because at least the group has Rick back at his badass best. The finale used a flashback framework to show Rick’s transformation from a leader into a farmer after the fall of Woodbury, at the urging of Scott Wilson’s Hershel. That was juxtaposed against the things Rick had to do now to keep his family and friends safe — things like biting one marauder’s neck off and gutting another. Translation: the old Rick is finally back. And it is the Rick the group will need if they are to survive this encounter with their latest foes. We caught up with Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman to get his thoughts on the finale, the evolution of Rick Grimes, and the fact that nobody major died, as well as get some insight into Terminus leader Gareth (that dude in the photo above) and what will happen when things pick back up in season 5. (Click through both pages to read the entire interview. Also make sure to read our finale interviews with showrunner Scott M. Gimple and star Andrew Lincoln.)




ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why are you doing this, Robert? Making the poor fans suffer for 6 months worrying about these guys stuck in a train car? How dare you, sir?
ROBERT KIRKMAN: [Laughs] If we could do the show year round and produce an episode every week, we totally would, but every now and then you gotta stop and make the show great and stuff.


EW: It’s your first real cliffhanger and a different finale for you guys in that sense.
KIRKMAN: Yeah, well, it all came naturally from the story. We knew that Terminus was going to be a great place to leave things. We kind of wanted to leave this season with a little more punch than we’ve left it in past years. I think the no cliffhanger thing has worked for us so far but I personally as a viewer have always been a big fan of season-ender cliffhangers and I enjoy that anticipation when that last minute rolls by and you’re going “WHAT THE HECK? OH, COME ON!” Like, that’s something that I thoroughly enjoy and I think Scott Gimple is into it too. So we’re very excited about the idea of ending this season on a cliffhanger and hopefully the viewers will like it too and it will make it that much harder to wait for season 5 and will make the anticipation that much higher.


EW: With all those flashbacks this episode really felt like the evolution of Rick Grimes back into a do-whatever-it-takes leadership position, which ultimately I guess is the arc of the whole season, right?
KIRKMAN: I’m really proud of what Scott Gimple, our showrunner, was able to do with this season and the way that it kind of does dovetail back into itself and by the end of the finale you kind of see how there was this grand plan from day 1 of the beginning of season 4 and everything does kind of interconnect and drive this forward into this Rick Grimes story which is an exploration into who this guy is and how he is uniquely suited to be the leader in this new form of civilization and how he is evolving into the guy that is going to be able to keep people safe and keep people alive and how he is finally accepting that role.


EW: What about that breaking point scene for Rick where he bites off Joe’s neck and then guts that other dude who had Carl pinned down?
KIRKMAN: In that scene Rick realizes he is a guy who will do absolutely anything to survive. There has been all of this discussion about retaining your humanity and not losing who it is that you are. We started this season with Rick putting his gun away and trying to live a peaceful life and trying to be there for his son in a way that he hadn’t been in the seasons previous and to try to show his son how to live and be a human being. And in this episode he kind of has to become a monster, otherwise something terrible is going to happen to Carl, possibly all of them are going to die. It’s him being pushed to his breaking point and him realizing no, this is the world we’re in and I have to be in this world so now I’m going to do whatever I have to do. And in a sense he almost becomes a walker when he’s biting that guy’s neck out and savagely murdering this other guy. He really loses his humanity in a very big way. Which is something we’ll be exploring moving forward.


EW: Even though the season ends with the group in this terrible situation, in a weird way it’s almost an upbeat note with that proclamation by Rick of “They’re screwing with the wrong people.”
KIRKMAN: Rick Grimes’ evolution has come at the exact right point. This is the Rick Grimes that they need in that train car. And this is the Rick Grimes that the people of Terminus should not have encountered. It is the exact wrong time for them to encounter this guy. So it is supposed to be a somewhat uplifting kind of cliffhanger because you should get a sense that this guy is now ready for anything. He can handle absolutely whatever the word is going to throw at him and that is something we’re going to be exploring in season 5.


EW: When you guys mapped out season 4 and especially the back half of the season, were you worried about having Rick MIA so much since he really is the face of the franchise?
KIRKMAN: Well, you know, being apart makes the heart grow fonder and all that stuff. That was all by design. We knew this was going to be a very Rick centric end of the season and we really wanted to come back with Rick Grimes in a big way in this last episode and it was kind of important to the overall arc of the show to build up some of these other side characters and bring them to the forefront and help us get to know them a little bit more and also keep Rick in our back pocket so that the last episode seemed a little bit more unexpected than it would have otherwise.



Image Credit: Gene Page/AMC


EW: A lot of people, including myself, have theorized that the people of Terminus may actually be a new version of the group of Cannibals we met in the comics, and the clues seemed to be there in this finale. What would you like to say about that speculation?
KIRKMAN: Stay tuned for season 5! But I do enjoy looking at the speculation and I will say that some people are right and some people are wrong, which is always the case. And I think that people are going to be pretty excited when we come back in season 5. We’ll be revealing very quickly what it is that is going on and what it is that Rick Grimes and everybody else are up against. We’re not going to be keeping that close to the vest for too very long. So in our big season 5 premiere we’ll get some answers.
EW: What can you tell us about this guy Gareth that we were just introduced to who seems to be leading the Terminus group?
KIRKMAN: He is a very interesting character and he is based on someone in the comics. So there are some pieces of him in the comic book series that you could dig out if you were a bit of a detective, and we’ll definitely reveal more next season. He’s a big character.


EW: I know you all run this fine line because you want the stakes to feel real and to do that, people need to die. But you killed so many main original characters in season 3. Obviously the Hershel death this season was brutal, but did you guys make a conscious effort to not kill too many big characters this time around because when you do that you run the risk of altering the DNA of the show?
KIRKMAN: As far as altering our show DNA too much, I think our DNA is ever changing and ever evolving and that’s kind of our thing, so that hasn’t really brought any hesitation as far as killing characters. But I know that early on back in season 3 I was talking to Scott and I was saying, you know we’ve sort of worked ourselves into a unique position where the shocking thing for us to do is not to kill a character. It’s gotten to a point where we have killed so many characters that people kind of expect it and we can get to a point where we not do that, then that kind of pulls the rug out from under the viewers in a different way. And I like the idea of us not really relying on that too much here and there. There’s always going to be big deaths in this show. But we never want to get to point where we’re like, “Oh, it’s been five episodes without a big death. There’s totally going to be a big death this episode. Oh, there it is!” We don’t want it to ever be predictable. So you’ve got to change that up and keep the viewers guessing so no one can really get a handle on exactly what it is that this show is doing. We definitely wanted to do something a little different. And I think our finale is just as impactful and just as much of a gut punch as we wanted to do. I think there is some really heavy material and shocking stuff. But I’m really proud of the fact that we didn’t need a death to give that impact.


EW: I feel like there are a lot of shows that really don’t kill characters a lot so then they do in the finale, and I sort of like it when you all do it off-pace episodes like Lori and T-Dog in episode 4 of season 3. When you do it in places like that I think it ends up having even more impact.
KIRKMAN: Yeah, we don’t ever want the show to become formulaic in any way.


EW: Okay, so let’s barter now. What do I have to give you to make you tell me where Carol, Tyreese, Judith, and Beth are?
KIRKMAN: [Laughs] That’s not for sale, man.


EW: C’mon, I got some old, dirty Star Wars t-shirts I can throw your way.
KIRKMAN: Can we get 12 more Entertainment Weekly covers?


EW: Let me talk to main man Matt Bean and I’ll get back to you on that. At least you can tell me that things will pick up in season 5 quicker than the 7 to 8 month time jump you’ve started the last two seasons with, right?
KIRKMAN: It would be a safe bet to think that is not the case. But you never know. We like to keep people guessing, so we’ll just have to see.


EW: Finally, you guys made the announcement that Dave Erickson from Sons of Anarchy and Low Winter Sun is going to be working on the Walking Dead spin-off show with you. What can you say about that?
KIRKMAN: I can just say that I have been a huge fan of Dave Erickson for many, many years. We actually developed a project together before The Walking Dead show ever happened. So to me he was the best possible guy for the job and I’m very excited about this idea of doing this companion show for The Walking Dead because people aren’t quite aware of all the different new angles we can go in and the new kind of stories we can tell and just how unique and exciting and how much this show can stand alone. I think people are going to be pretty taken aback by how cool this companion show can be. And being able to work with Dave on it will be pretty exciting for me.

 

‘The Walking Dead’: Showrunner Scott M. Gimple on that ‘massive cliffhanger’
by Dalton Ross | March 31 2014 — 12:00 PM EDT


Image Credit: Gene Page/AMC


[SPOILER ALERT: Read on only if you have already watched the season finale of The Walking Dead.]
The Walking Dead ended season 4 with a good news/bad news situation. The bad news: Most of our survivors had been captured and were being held in a train car by the folks at Terminus, who may have just exaggerated their hospitality by a weeeeeeee bit. The good news: They have their leader back. There will be no more shunning of violence by Rick Grimes, who got the party started by biting marauder Joe’s neck off and then gutting the thug who had Carl pinned down. Now he needs to get his group out their latest jam. We spoke with Walking Dead showrunner Scott M. Gimple to get his take on the finale, the return of Rick, whether the folks of Terminus may indeed be cannibals as speculated, the location of Carol, Tyreese, Judith, and Beth, and what may be in store in season 5. (Read though both pages for the entire interview. Also make sure to read our finale interviews with star Andrew Lincoln and creator Robert Kirkman.)


ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with the unique framing you gave this episode. You’ve done flashbacks before but never as much back-and-forth between present and past as you did here. How did you come upon the decision to go that route and really frame not just the episode but the entire season as this evolution of Rick Grimes?
SCOTT M. GIMPLE: Yeah, there you go. Actually, I think that’s it. It was really to show that evolution of Rick. If he had wound up in that train car at any earlier in the season or in his story he would not have been prepared for what he might need to do to get out. He would not be as confident as he is at the end. And this was all about that journey to that moment and really it was to show the contrast of where he was at the beginning of the season.


EW: You’ve had a lot of deep, profound, introspective dialogue this season, but then for the very last line, you just went pure badass with “They’re screwing with the wrong people.” Was that important to get that almost triumphant moment in the midst of this terrible situation, especially to show that Rick Grimes was back?
GIMPLE: You know what, man? You are speaking my language here. It’s a massive cliffhanger. It is. But from an emotional standpoint, that is the conclusion of Rick’s story this season. He has completed the journey to that moment. He has become the Rick Grimes that can face this impossible situation. And it’s weird. They’re locked away in a train car by a group of extremely organized and well armed people, and yet I believe it is a triumphant moment for Rick because he’s certain he can deal with it. And the guy he was at the beginning of the season probably wouldn’t have been so certain.


EW: You guys don’t really do cliffhangers on this show so this was a bit of a departure for you in that sense.
GIMPLE: I think it was a question of completing the emotional story being the most important thing. We knew about this very, very, very early in the process. We knew what that last line was. It is a cliffhanger. But we’re gonna launch right into season 5 sort of full-speed this way. I will say the end of season 1, though they weren’t hanging on by their fingernails or anything, it was cliffhangery. We did have that lovely Bob Dylan song but still they had no idea where they were going or what they were doing at the end of season 1. The end of season 1 is, like, what the hell are they going to do? And the end of this season is, like, what the hell are they going to do? But, I will say, again, Rick has never been more prepared to face something like this.


EW: Ever since you introduced the concept of Terminus everyone has been theorizing who those people might be. A lot of people, including myself, have guessed they might be a new version of the group of cannibals we met in the comics. There certainly seemed to be some hints in this finale that could be the case — at least the way I took them. What would you like to say about that speculation?
GIMPLE: I think the speculation is totally fair. I wouldn’t jump to that myself. The hard thing in my head that I try to sort of do is ask, if I hadn’t read the comic would I still be jumping to these people being cannibals? I can neither confirm nor deny. We have done stories that are different from the comic that lead to the comic stories, like the illness storyline in the prison is certainly an example of that. Though we are following the comic, and as far as where the story has turned in the comic it is right around the time of the cannibals and all, but there might be some stuff in the show before that.


EW: Is it safe to say that Gareth is the leader of Terminus?
GIMPLE: It really might not be entirely true, but he certainly was the leader in this situation. So getting into the power structures of Terminus beyond that probably isn’t very exciting anyway. But we know what we know, and he definitely was the guy in charge in this episode.


EW: Until the finale, the past month or so has featured the least amount of Rick Grimes that we’ve ever seen. With him being the protagonist that we started this journey with, were you guys concerned at all about being away from him so much?
GIMPLE: That’s a great question. I would say it’s not going to be the usual thing. This half-season, I feel so lucky to have been able to do this incredibly unusual season for a show. A lot of shows would never do this sort of thing. It’s a tribute to AMC and the support of the executive producers and the ingenuity of the writers and an incredible cast and the most incredibly generous actor I have ever met in my entire life, Mr. Andy Lincoln, that we were able to do this. This show reinvents itself every eight episodes. And I love that about it. It is an incredible challenge as we are doing a new television program every eight episodes. But that was an awesome TV show and I loved that TV show and now that TV show is going to be very different.


And there will be some times where you don’t see Rick Grimes. It is a big ensemble. But I told Andy for this half-season, chill out, play some golf, hang out with your family, because season 5 there is going to be a whole lot of Rick Grimes and you are not going to be lying unconscious on a couch for any of those episodes. So that was an unusual thing, but we all had a pretty good idea for our structure of season 5 back when we were starting season 4. I’m not saying I had everything completely locked down. But I knew generally what the structure for season 5 was going to be. And I knew that we could do a chapter of this story where we didn’t see quite as much Rick, to feature the other characters, focus on the other characters, build a relationship with those other characters. So when we see all these people together, we know who those people are even if they don’t get a whole lot of screen time in an episode.

EW: Now you mentioned this to me just a minute ago but I didn’t catch it. Where again did you say Carol, Tyreese, Judith, and Beth were? If you cold just repeat that for me, that would be great.
GIMPLE: Yes. They are on the road. They are in one of the storage containers. They are hanging out in quarters in Terminus. They were the ones firing on Rick and the group the whole time. Or that’s just a multi-level train car, and they’re just upstairs. I will say that episode 14 was the end of the character story for Tyreese and for Carol and it was important for me and the writers. We thought it was better to end with their emotional story rather than their geographic story, knowing that the finale would be mostly Rick’s story.


EW: So many main characters died in season 3. Was there a conscious decision on your guys’ part as you mapped out season 4 that you wanted to lessen the kill count a bit?
GIMPLE: The kill count is a weird thing because we don’t necessarily want the show to be like Survivor. I like Survivor. I think it’s a cool show. But you don’t want it to be like that. And you don’t place that as the first story victim. So it’s just in telling the stories and seeing where the stories go. You can do that in any episode and even in its least incarnation it has a great deal of power, but you shouldn’t lean on that power. And just in the stories we were telling this season, it really didn’t seem like our stories with these characters were leaning that way. They often do and there are plenty coming up. And I don’t even mean season 5, I mean season 6 and season 7.


But this story in and of itself just didn’t seem to bend that way. I will say though that if it can happen at any time, and it can, I don’t know if it’s great if it always happens in the penultimate episode and then the finale, like every year. Then that’s just sort of a weird type of storytelling. And even in the comic, you don’t see it coming and I think that’s a tribute to Robert not putting it in a regular rhythm. And it was kind of falling into a regular sort of rhythm with the show. Hershel’s death had to happen where it happened because it was about those two stories crashing together. With this, it just didn’t seem to be the story we were telling for this part of the season. We’re so lucky that there are so many fans of the show and it’s doing well that we can look forward to not having to do that every 15th and 16th episode of a season. But that could mean it happens in episode 1 of the firth season, and episode 4. We’re trying to tell the stories and have those moments fall where they may.


That isn’t to say that those things happening aren’t big things and they are very operatic and them happening at half season and season finales does make sense because that is the emotional apex of the story, but it just happened in this go round that it really was about transforming Rick into being the person he needed to be to face the world without angst while still retaining his humanity. Hershel’s death was a huge part of that. But really the biggest part of it in this one was the people that Rick killed rather than the people that Rick lost.


EW: The past two seasons have picked up about 7 or 8 months after the previous one ended. With this cliffhanger, can we assume that we’ll get back to these guys quicker than that?
GIMPLE: I have to say — though I would never want to say anything definitely — if I were a viewer I think it would be a hard thing to skip over whatever happened. I think it would be hard to skip over what the hell is going to happen and how the hell are they going to get out of that? Maybe we start 2 years later and we’re doing Lost style flashbacks every episode. And what’s weird is, everything is cool! The zombie apocalypse has been cleaned up. Everybody is just leading their regular lives. And nobody wants to talk about how they cured the zombie apocalypse and that’s the show. They don’t want to talk about what happened.

 

‘The Walking Dead’: Andrew Lincoln promises ‘we will rain hell upon these Termites!’
by Dalton Ross | March 31 2014 — 12:00 PM EDT


Image Credit: Gene Page/AMC


[SPOILER ALERT: Read on only if you have already watched the season finale of The Walking Dead.]
RICK GRIMES IS BACK!!! There will be no more of this put down the gun and pick up the garden hoe nonsense. The transformation of Rick back into a fearless leader was complete right around the time in last night’s season 4 Walking Dead finale when he bit marauder Joe in the neck and then gutted his buddy who was set to do harm to Carl. The survivors will need that newly focused badass considering their current predicament as the season ended with most of the group locked up in a train car by the baddies of Terminus. We spoke with Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln to get his thoughts on the evolution of Rick Grimes this season, filming those flashback scenes with Scott Wilson’s Hershel, that crazy cliffhanger ending, and why he can’t wait to get the battle started in season 5. (Also make sure to read our finale interviews with showrunner Scott M. Gimple and creator Robert Kirkman.)




ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So you realize this is absolute torture you guys are putting us through by leaving us with this cliffhanger ending, right?
ANDREW LINCOLN: Well, we’ve been living with it for four months already, Dalton, so I don’t know what you’re worried about!


EW: True, I guess we have it easy in that sense.
LINCOLN: Believe me, all of us have been going “How the FUNK do we get out of the car? How are we gonna get out? That’s all we’ve been saying very quietly on email for the last four months. It was astonishing. I loved — I LOVED — that! I loved the fact that we do the cliffhanger. We haven’t done it yet and like most of the season, it just changes it up, kinda break the show up and then start it all over again and rebuild it again in a different form.


EW: Maybe more than anyone, Rick has really struggled with his humanity in this apocalyptic world. And this episode completed this season long arc of his evolution from a guy that wanted no part in being a leader into a guy ready to kick ass, take names, and do whatever it takes to keep his group safe.
LINCOLN: Oh, I don’t care what Scott Gimple has written — we’re improvising the first couple of episodes. We’ve already said that those Termites — we’re just gonna kick their butts! Honestly, it is so good to be playing Rick again. And you’re absolutely right, this is a man — his journey this season and since the beginning — it goes to the question of can we ever come back to be the people we once were, and certainly the first half of the season was about a man suppressing that, and suppressing his brutality for the sake of his son. And now you see a man totally accepting that side of himself, that brutality for the sake of his son. And it’s just a really neat play that you get a man who is completely at peace with the fact that he’s a man and a monster and he needs to be in this new world and he’s probably the most dangerous he’s ever been, but also the most capable he’s ever been. Which is why the final exchange is not anything but a call to arms. They have no idea who they’re dealing with.


EW: Even though the season ends with you all in seemingly the worst situation possible, I actually found that final moment with your line of “They’re screwing with the wrong people” to be actually quite invigorating. Like, hell yeah, Rick Grimes is back!
LINCOLN: Oh. We’re gonna open up a can of whup-ass! I’m so excited. I just know it’s gonna go off! It’s so cool! I have no idea how we’re gonna get out of there, but when we do, we will rain hell upon these Termites!


EW: There’s that scene with Norman where Rick tells Daryl, “You’re my brother.” I didn’t realize until that moment how much I missed seeing those two guys together.
LINCOLN: Aw, man. I think that was the intention. Because it was real. We’ve been meeting like ships in the night. We would see one person, but we were so isolated from each other, certainly for the second half of the season. And you’re right: I think that relationship is one of the most exciting, satisfying relationships. I speak for myself but I’m sure Norman would say the same. They just work so well together, these guys. And the writers Angela Kang and Scott have to be commended because you have one of the most brutal acts ever perpetrated the night before, and then that fine moment. And it’s the same thing in episode 14 where you have this astonishing thing that goes off with Carol and Tyreese and then there’s a moment of grace. And the same thing kind of happens. And so the audience, even though they are appalled, they feel like what Rick says that going through all of last night was worth it because we found you and we’ve got you back again. That’s how important it is that they found one another again for the sake of the group. And that’s the joy of it. It was such a laugh to play that scene, just because we don’t even have to rehearse. Me and Norman just sit down and start talking because we’ve lived with these people for so long.


EW: What was it like getting to film those flashback scenes with Scott Wilson?
LINCOLN: Scott Wilson is a legend. He’s the best. They broke they mold when they made that guy and just having him back for those two days you could feel the crew lift their spirits. It was right at the end of the shoot. He’s one of my favorite people on the planet. That whole flashback almost acts as a prequel to the very opening image you see of Rick as the farmer. It’s a steppingstone between season 3 and season 4 and we understand how Rick was able to withdraw back into the gates, renounce leadership, and we realize how instrumental Hershel was in all of that, in reclaiming the old Rick.


EW: Hershel’s death was so brutal, and maybe the most brutal one you’ve ever had. And you and I have talked a lot about wanting the stakes to feel real and therefore needing to kill people off, but maybe in the past it was a bit to much in the sense that the more people you kill, especially when they are old school original members, you invariably change the show itself. I kinda liked the fact that we did not lose more people in the finale, that we still have these people that we’ve been rooting for all for the most part there.
LINCOLN: Yeah, I agree with you. And there is always a concern that if you take one more person away and then the deck of card falls. And I think everyone in the writer’s room realized that. Losing Hershel was such a monumental blow that we didn’t need anybody else to go because everybody is still reeling form that bereavement and it was such a profound shock and it spun everybody else out into orbit. So I agree with you. But we’ve lost people, which is just as cool. Are Tyreese and Carol locked in one of those boxes at Terminus? Where are they? Where’s Beth? There are still people lost and still things to question. I agree with you. We have to tread that fine line between shock factor — which is one of the great strengths we have on this show, we can do that — and also holding together the integrity and not doing it just for the sake of the shock factor. It has to push on the story.


EW: What was it like having all that time off during this back eight, because until the finale we had barely seen you over the past month or so?
LINCOLN: I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the writers. My handicap dropped seven points! And I won quite a lot of money off of David Morrissey and Scott Gimple on the golf course! Initially it was quite a tiring job, but then it was too long and I missed doing it and I missed working and I missed being on set and I missed being present on set and I missed the crew. So initially it was great but then I started to go a bit stir crazy. So my wife kicked me out and said “Just go on set. Just hang around.” I get twitchy when I don’t work. So it was nice initially, but I think it was a little too much time off for my taste.


EW: Well, Scott says he plans to keep you quite busy in season 5, so no more golf for you, mister.
LINCOLN: R&R is done. And that’s the way I like it.

 

[h=1]'Walking Dead' Dissection: Robert Kirkman, Scott M. Gimple Talk Terror at Terminus, Preview Season 5[/h] 9:00 AM PDT 3/31/2014 by Lesley Goldberg



[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from the season-four finale, "A," of AMC's The Walking Dead and the comic series it is based on.]

AMC's The Walking Dead capped off its fourth season Sunday with a bloody and deadly finale that set up a mysterious new storyline to launch the zombie drama into its previously announced fifth season.

The hour did not shy away from violence. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) took a bite out of Joe's (Jeff Kober) neck and ripped his throat out when the leader of a band of "claimers" had a gun pointed at his head while a member of the marauders was moments away from raping his son, Carl (Chandler Riggs). Following that deadly exchange, Rick, Carl, Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) -- who helped save the former sheriff's life -- made their way to Terminus, approaching the former train station with extreme caution.

Much like Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Glenn (Steven Yeun), Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Eugene (Josh McDermitt), Rosita (Christian Serratos), Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Tara (Alanna Masterson) were, Rick's mini group were greeted with open arms and the offer of food and shelter as the community had been billed as a "sanctuary for all" and "those who arrive, survive." After sneaking in the back way and meeting Gareth (Greek's Andrew J. West), the head of Terminus, Rick becomes instantly suspect when he spots Hershel's pocket watch -- which he had gifted to Glenn -- hanging from the waist of one of the Terminus guys, with another sporting Maggie's poncho and the riot gear Glenn had before passing it along to Eugene.

The subsequent shootout finds Gareth's gang aiming at Rick and company's feet and leading them through what it turns out is a massively creepy Terminus. As they run from room to room, they pass a massive pile of what appears to be human bones -- including a ribcage -- as well as a super creepy candle room where what could be the names of victims and their personal effects forming a circle of memorial in a room scrawled with possible warnings to strangers.

The season comes to a close when Rick, Daryl, Carl and Michonne are forced into a small railcar where they're reunited with Glenn, Maggie, Abraham, Eugene, Rosita, Bob, Sasha and Tara. With seemingly little hope for survival, a newly empowered Rick declares, "They're screwing with the wrong people" -- an almost direct quote from the comics after Rick's group comes face to face with a group of cannibals.

The Hollywood Reporter caught up with showrunner Scott M. Gimple and executive producer Robert Kirkman (who created the comics on which the series is based) to break down the finale and preview what's ahead in season five. (Gimple will return as showrunner and pen the season-five premiere. Kirkman will write the second episode.)

Scott, your first season as showrunner is in the books. What was the most valuable lesson you learned?

Gimple: You can do irrefutably impossible things with the right amount of planning and support from intelligent and hardworking people and pizza.
Season four explored the things people do to stay alive. What's the theme of season five?
Gimple: Rick said, and before that Robert said it in the comics: Are we too far gone to be people anymore, to actually be human beings, to be able to relate to one another on an emotional level, to be able to live a real humanistic and emotional life -- are we too far gone? Next season really is who do we become after that? Once that question is answered for ourselves, who are these people? That idea will be explored a few different ways.

Kirkman: We're ending on a cliffhanger in season four. We're going to be dealing with Terminus in a big way as soon as we come back. We're also going to be dealing with a more capable and prepared Rick Grimes coming out of what he's experienced in this episode. He's going to go into another really awesome direction.

This season was a remix of the comics. Will you continue with that approach in mind?

Gimple: Absolutely. As we said during our first conversation, in "Pretty Much Dead Already" when Sophia comes out of the barn, that's a remix. If we use verbatim from the comic, that's awesome. And if we have to change it, that's an opportunity to tie character and theme to it in different ways. There are ways we even chose to remix it, like with Lizzie and Mika, to find ways to take things that Robert did. He long played that [with Ben and his brother, Billy] in the comic, and we can do the same thing even a bit longer than he did it just because I liked the way he did it in the comic and I wanted to turn it up that much more.

The back half of season four featured more individual character exploration and some stand-alone stories. Will season five follow a similar structure?

Kirkman: I don't think this show is going to settle into one formula. We'll continue to tell different stories here and there. There may be some individual episodes that focus on a smaller group or one character. But I don't think it'll become the norm. We'll continue doing what we always do: to try and break new ground with every season.

Where will season five pick up? Will there be a time jump?

Kirkman: That remains to be seen. A time jump would be a bit jarring, but maybe that's an interesting way to do things. They'll either be in that train car or there will be a time jump. I guess there could possibly be other options, but I'm not going to nail anything down.
What kind of discussions did you have with AMC about telling a cannibalism story?
Gimple: I don't believe we've totally, completely, definitively described or illustrated those people as cannibals. They're up to no good, but I saw no people being eaten. There are absolutely piles of human bones there. That doesn't necessarily mean that they ate those people. People have died there, and they are up to awful things there; whether or not it's cannibalism, we'll find out pretty quickly. That episode does not definitively tell you whether or not they're cannibals.

Gareth seems similar to Chris, the head of the so-called Hunters from the comics. Would you say those two characters have anything in common?

Gimple: They have very similar hair. (Laughs.) That's as far as I would go. I'm not going to say people are right or wrong, but Gareth certainly isn't Chris from the comics unless Chris was lying to us about his past, which he may have. Chris unloaded what happened in his past in some detail, but I can't confirm or deny.

Kirkman: It's possible; there are some similarities there. That's all I'll say.

The people at Terminus have a boneyard and an ample supply of food -- with some speculating that the food Mary was cooking in the penultimate episode looking a bit like limbs. Thoughts? Where would they get all that food if Rick can barely find a rabbit?

Gimple: It very well could be cannibals. If it was, I hope people would be excited about it. And if it wasn't, I'd hope they're not too bummed out. There's even the middle ground, which is the remix approach. It might be right and wrong.

Kirkman: It's entirely possible that the only thing Rick can find is a rabbit because Terminus has some sort of systematic hunting methods. I wouldn't read too much into being offered food, simply because it's a very good gesture and an easy way to build trust, especially when people are coming out of the wilderness for the most part. Those people would be hungry, and if the "Terminans," or whatever we're calling them, appear to be kind and accommodating, offering them food would be the natural thing to do.

So it's not Beth on the grill as many are speculating?

Gimple: She may be on the grill. Or that may be a lovely cut of flank steak with the flank being a cow, goat, sheep or deer.

Kirkman: The more prevalent a theory is and the more people who have keyed in on it makes it the least likely one to be true.

What's the deal with the boneyard and the candle room that seems like a memorial with words of warning to strangers? All signs point to cannibals with some sort of conscience.

Gimple: We will get more of that in episode 501. It looks like a memorial, and they could be super weird people who memorialize people they victimize, or it could be that something happened to them.

Kirkman: That possibility is there. The people of Terminus have a great many secrets that will be revealed. They've proven themselves to be fairly dangerous. Whether or not they are actually cannibals remains to be seen. Seeing Gareth and Rick and the people of Terminus and our survivors go head to head is going to be interesting. There is a very deep, dark and storied history to Terminus and how these people came to be that will be revealed in season five. There are an enormous amount of hints here and there in the finale that you could freeze frame and study and dig into over the span of months between the end of season four and the beginning of season five that will in some cases give you some pretty good hints and other cases be deliberately misleading as we intend it.

The Cannibals story ended in the comics when they "ate" Dale after he'd already been bitten. Bob has an injury from The Governor's shooting attack that was compounded when a walker took a bite out of his bandage. Could this be something you explore next season?

Kirkman: Or there could be no story there. He was injured in the shootout at the prison and had the bandage, and it seems like the bite saves him, and that could be the end of that story.

The past couple episodes have been extremely dark, with Lizzie's and Mika's deaths and Carl's near rape in the finale, further proving how dangerous this world is for children. How will these experiences change how our core cast treats kids going forward?

Kirkman: They've seen that children can be very vulnerable in many ways -- emotionally, physically -- and they can be a source of extreme danger, as we've seen with Lizzie. They'll be a bit wearier moving forward of how they encounter children and what to do with them. We'll be seeing a bit more of that moving forward.

Carl has been through an awful lot this season and was nearly raped during this episode. How will that change him, considering he already thinks he's a monster?

Gimple: What's interesting and tragic -- and this is something we were going for from the start of the season -- is that he would wind up with a very mature self-awareness. He's worried about being a monster, but the fact that he's worried about that is actually wonderful for this kid. At the end of season three, he wasn't worried about being a monster. (Laughs.) He was almost proud of the rough things he's done. He said, "I did what I had to do," in the season finale. In this, he's straight-up worried about the things he's done. He's worried about what his father believes him to be. It's a subtle thing, but the fact that he's worried about his demons to me says he's conquered them, that he is a human being with a conscience. He was a kid that was going down a road where he wasn't going to have one. It's not an awesome victory with Journey blasting "Anyway You Want It" after it. It's really sad but also a wonderful thing that we saw Carl recognizing and worried about his own humanity. When that gentleman with the glasses was screaming -- which was directly out of the comics, including the same bite -- Carl ran to help without thinking. He's made a lot of progress.

What kind of emotional impact will tearing Joe's throat out and nearly seeing Carl raped have on Rick? He was still shaking the morning after the encounter with the claimers.

Gimple: I don't see Rick as shaking. The stuff he told Daryl represented him as angst-free about it. Not that he was glib or casual or anything like that, but it isn't the wringing of the hands we may have seen in the past. He isn't necessarily cold; he's accepting these are the things he is going to have to do, and he can't feel bad about it anymore; he can't torture himself about it anymore. It's, "This is who I am, and I'm going to accept it. I'm not going to celebrate it or congratulate myself about it, but I'm not going to let it destroy me."

Kirkman: Rick is resigned to the fact that this is what he's going to have to do to survive. I don't think he's particularly shamed or happy about what he's doing; he's accepting his fate. You have to do what you have to do, and that's something he'll be dealing with quite a bit. [Seeing Carl almost raped and the experience with the claimers] will not be glossed over. This is not a show that introduces things like that into a character's past and then doesn't deal with them. It will be very much at the forefront when it comes to Rick, Carl and even Daryl's character as we move forward.

Hershel (Scott Wilson) was back for this episode. Was that filmed before he was killed off? Why go back to the start of the season at the prison?

Kirkman: Scott came back for that, and that was filmed with the finale. It was a good bookend. It was great to come back and see peaceful Rick and his influence directly from Hershel to see how far Rick has gone this season. I love the way it dovetails back into beginning of the season. It shows us that this is one big overarcing story that deals a lot with Rick's transformation and evolution. It gives us this very different Rick that we have going into season five. It was a great opportunity to get Scott back and do some cool stuff with him.

Rick is a changed man from the farmer we met at the start of season four. How will his experiences with the claimers and The Governor change how he approaches his position at Terminus?

Gimple: He has a great deal of confidence. He knows he can do whatever he has to do and won't hesitate, blink or be wringing his hands afterward. He could not be better equipped to handle this impossible situation than he is right now.

Are Carol, Tyreese and Beth the group's best bet to get out of that railcar at Terminus, or were those screams were heard at Terminus them?

Kirkman: That's our big unknown moving into the fifth season: where these characters are and how they will play into this Terminus story. It's entirely possible that they're all in another train car somewhere. It's entirely possible that none of them are at Terminus or that none of them ever arrived there.

Might that powdered milk near the train car where Rick and company are have been something they fed Judith and the people who were there before them?
Gimple: It would seem like they have people in there that they're feeding. Interesting.
Kirkman: Anything is possible.
The railcar is the first time Rick and Daryl meet Abraham and his army. How will they get along? How might they respond to Eugene, who claims to know what caused the outbreak and how to cure it?
Kirkman: Abraham has proven himself to be the alpha male that has a clear mission and directive, who will stop at nothing to accomplish that. If in season five we find that Rick is at odds with that mission, we could certainly see a clash between those two. If their goals align, we could see them working together. It's going to be a pretty interesting one and will give us a lot of story material. I'd be on the look out for what it is that's going to be going on between those two guys.

Rick and Daryl shared a quiet moment when he referred to him as his brother. How will that relationship evolve now that they're around so many alpha males?

Kirkman: There is a closeness that is growing between all of these characters as they continue to survive together. New bonds have been formed this season between characters that didn't have as strong of a bond before. We'll continue to see them grow together so that we can tear them apart. That's what's happening here.

The last line of the season: "They're screwing with the wrong people" -- is a version of Rick's quote from Issue 64. What was the discussion like to end the season on that note?

Gimple: That ending we knew super early on. There wasn't as much discussion toward it as just making sure we were building toward it. The guy who was hiding under the bed in Episode 412 -- which I don't think was a cowardly act at all; it was a smart act -- but the guy who was doing that was an intermediary version of Rick that led him to be the person who went after the claimers the way he did. He's gone through such a journey from where we saw him at the beginning [of the season] without a gun at his side, farming. Now, even though they have him in a horrible spot, he knows he can do what he has to do to survive.

 

[h=1]'Walking Dead's' Andrew Lincoln: 'We Ran Into Hell'[/h] 9:00 AM PDT 3/31/2014 by Lesley Goldberg

[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from the season-four finale, "A," of AMC's The Walking Dead and the comic series it is based on.]






Prepare to meet a new Rick Grimes when AMC's The Walking Dead returns for season five.
Following the bloody and deadly season-four finale that found Andrew Lincoln's beleaguered former sheriff stuck in a railcar with his friends -- as well as a new crop of like-minded survivors -- Rick's experiences with The Governor and Joe's "claimers" have drastically changed him.
Seeing his son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), almost raped triggered something primal in Rick, star Lincoln tells The Hollywood Reporter. Watching the group's father figure, Hershel (Scott Wilson), decapitated at the hands of The Governor and now literally tearing Joe's (Jeff Kober) throat out have made Rick less than trusting of new people -- including Gareth. The mysterious leader at Terminus reunited Rick and company with the rest of his former group -- forcing them into a railcar with Glenn (Steven Yeun), Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and company. The move came after a shootout with what Lincoln called the "Termites," who were aiming for everyone's feet and pursued them through a community that would indicate the group had turned to cannibalism in order to survive.
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Lincoln to break down the episode and get the inside scoop on how Rick's experience in season four will impact him moving forward.

What was it like taking a "bite" out of Jeff Kober's neck?

It was brutal. It was 4:30 in the morning. We did 95 setups or so of that scene alone leading up to the bite. I remember [EP and VFX guru] Greg Nicotero looking at me earlier in the day and saying, "We're doing the gag. Do you want chicken or beef?" I asked for the chicken, and Greg asked if I wanted it cooked or raw. I asked which was the closest to flesh. He said uncooked, and that is what we went with. It was a rite of passage. It was the gnarliest thing I've ever had to do. I didn't realize how my body would feel with raw chicken flesh in my mouth among all the other blood gags in the scene. There was one take where I felt close to a wretch. After that, I picked up the knife and stabbed this other guy, and he kept spitting a full mouth of blood into my eyes every take. (Laughs.) It was beyond gruesome. Sometimes that happens in this show and it just became wrong again. It was so shocking reading it that I actually asked [showrunner] Scott M. Gimple if we were overstepping a mark. "Is there a line in the sand that we're going over?" When I did the scene and saw my son being attacked by these guys, it just made sense. He had this completely animalistic reaction.
Rick has been through a ridiculous amount this season. How will his experience with The Governor and the claimers change him?
Rick's journey can be encapsulated by a question: Can you ever come back? Can you ever be the man you once were before this happened? You saw Rick at the beginning of the season as a man repressing his brutality for the sake of his son. At the end of the season, you see a man accepting brutality for the sake of his son. Rick is a man who has made peace with the brutality within him that's inherent in him along with the moral sense that is just as valid a part of him. Rick is psychologically the strongest he's ever been. Because he's realized that the only way to stay alive -- to keep his son alive in this new world -- is by actively embracing all sides of his personality including darkness, fury and rage. After meeting these teenagers and the fact that they were herding us into these boxcars and seeing everyone in that reunion, that galvanizes Rick. Think about what we've seen and done -- this is a guy you've just seen tear the throat out of someone who has been surviving on their own for two years. I don't know what the fallout of that is going to be, but you're seeing a man returning from the wilderness stronger than ever and more terrifying because of it.
Rick savagely killed the man who tried to rape Carl -- with his son watching that whole attack. How will seeing that impact Carl considering the kid already thinks he's a monster?
That scene was supposed to be more graphic, and we played it more graphic than that, which was a justification for the throat rip and everything, because it's something any father seeing his son about to be raped would probably do. It's interesting territory to explore: Can the man and the monster live in the same body? How does that work? Is it possible? Can that schizophrenic idea exist? It's very disturbing; the gloves came off in a couple of these episodes in the back eight. The child witnessing that and saying it didn't affect me. Carl has that scene with Michonne where she thinks he was frightened by his father. Carl says it's the opposite; that he wasn't disturbed or frightened by it; he wanted to watch. That's a deeply disturbing area that we're possibly heading toward next season.
The gang is now trapped in a railcar at the mercy of what we're led to believe are a group of cannibals…
They're a teenage bunch of hooligans! It's a shop of horrors that we were running through and hearing screams of people caged. We ran into hell is what it feels like.
How much darker can we expect Rick to get?
That reminds me of Spinal Tap: "How much more black could this be?" "None more black." So none more dark than we've just seen. (Laughs.) We've had these ridiculously grand and Greek tragedy kind of moments in our show -- the death of Lori, Sophia coming out of the barn and having to be put down -- and you think, "No way can we buy this." That's been the scale of the writing on the show; they find a way to make it justified. When I bit Joe's throat, it made sense to me when I did it. It may not have made sense on the page, but the intention of it was telling everybody that he's like a wolf; he's so primal. It was so guttural and animalistic. The short answer is we're trapped by these guys, and I imagine it'll get pretty messy. Frankly, there's nothing I like more than playing crazy badass Rick Grimes -- and he is pissed at the moment. I don't know what Scott has planned, but I've been texting other castmembers, and we should improvise a few scenes because these kids -- we call those who live at Terminus the Termites -- are going to get it!
How are we going to see all these alpha males work together to get out of Terminus?
I don't know. It's exciting getting the band back together, but there's still three band members out there -- Tyreese, who is no slouch and an alpha male; and Carol, who is frankly beyond an alpha male; and we've got Beth out there as well. We've been sitting with this for four months, wondering, "How the f--- are we going to get out of the car?!" We still don't know; they won't tell us! (Laughs.)
Might Rick and Abraham use the fact to their advantage that Eugene claims to know what caused the outbreak and how to cure it?
Possibly, but I'm seriously distrustful of a scientist with a mullet. (Laughs.) I remember going, "What does he know? Is he a scientist? Are we supposed to be following him?" Rick is really suspect. I think there is a point -- which I don't know because we haven't added it up yet -- where there's milk outside the railcar, so they're feeding them formula to fatten them up or something. There's a point at which where if they are going to eat us, they're going to have to transport us, kill us, and there will be time -- but this is all speculation.
Rick has yet to be reunited with Carol and Tyreese. What might that look like?
I can't imagine. I'm so excited about that because one of the greatest things the writers did -- the most traumatic episode I've read, 414 with the children -- is among that terrible tragedy and the bomb going off of what just happened, the only way that there is any sort of grace or redemption is Tyreese's forgiveness. It was the only way that would play out. I don't know, but I like the idea of them coming in and shooting up Terminus with a baby on their back. I'd love Judith coming in to help save the day. But I'm not sure about that. They could be one of the screamers.

 

‘Walking Dead’ Showrunner Talks Bloody Finale, Teases “Action-Heavy” Season 5


By DOMINIC PATTEN | Monday March 31, 2014 @ 9:00am PDT


SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details of last night’s Season 4 finale of The Walking Dead.


Don’t let anyone tell you that AMC’s The Walking Dead doesn’t pack a hell of a lot more than zombies into the series — as last night’s bloody and emotionally charged Season 4 finale proved. Besides the ever-present undead, the fourth season saw a big change in leadership among Sheriff Rick Grimes and the survivors, the outbreak of a raging influenza virus in their converted prison home, the exile of one major character, the graphic decapitation of another, the death of a major foe, some revealing backstories, and the scattering of the remaining members of the series in search of a new home and new hope. It also saw Walking Dead shattering cable ratings records again, and a couple of times it beat the usually unbeatable Sunday Night Football on NBC and topped that network’s Winter Olympics coverage three weeks in a row in the key adults 18-49 demo. There’s a good chance that when last night’s ratings come in later today, we’ll see another record. Walking Dead executive producer Scott Gimple, who just completed his first full season as showrunner, talked with me about last night’s finale as well as what fans can expect in Season 5 this fall and some changes behind the scenes.


In many ways, the Season 4 finale was a bit of a back to the future for Walking Dead, with Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes taking charge again and the majority of the series’ main characters reunited. Of course, by the end of the episode, that reunion found them locked in a train car and held captive by the deceptively welcoming rulers of the supposed Terminus sanctuary they’d all converged on in the finale. Which means the opening of Season 5 will be very different than the soulful final episodes of Season 4 that saw the core survivors separated. “I would say that these next eight episodes are going to be a little more action-heavy, with a lot of big twists,” said Gimple of Season 5, which is planned out and already well into the writing stage. “Really 85% of them are together again, so it’s a pretty good guess that they’re going to remain together and that’s going to give us a whole new emotional dynamic as well,” he said. “So I guess the biggest thing is prepare for a very different Walking Dead. Yet again.”


Part of that new season will see former Medium producer Corey Reed, who Gimple met while working briefly on pal David S. Goyer’s Da Vinci’s Demons, joining the writing staff. Another Starz alum, Heather Bellson, who wrote an episode for the first season of Black Sails, will also come onboard.


Despite the appearance last night of the slaughtered Hershel Greene character in flashbacks, don’t expect to see more of actors Scott Wilson or David Morrissey, who played the also-now-dead villain the Governor — at least not for a while. “I don’t really see it in the immediate future,” Gimple said of a return of either of those characters for Season 5. “We would love to work with Scott and David again and it certainly is possible in the future, but right now that isn’t planned. It was very much about, in that episode, you know, telling Rick’s entire story in that episode, in that one episode,” Gimple added.


With every finale so far bringing the death of a major character, it was no surprise that AMC hyped the Season 4 ender with “Who Will Arrive?” and “Who Will Survive?” campaigns. What ended up being the big surprise last night was that it marked the first season ender where no major character died. “It was certainly nice to break the pattern. If we had a character dead every Episode 8, 15 and 16 every year, that gets a bit predictable,” Gimple said. “The big story in this episode isn’t the people that Rick loses or has taken away from him but rather the people that Rick kills — hat’s different for the show. Rick is the one that’s doing the killing in this season finale. Not the walkers, and not the other people,” said Gimple, who co-wrote the episode with Angela Kang. ”He’s the one with the power and that’s the story that we were looking to tell.”


“Hershel dying when he did was fulfilling that character’s story and also serving the overall story for a number of characters,” Gimple said of the shocking midseason finale that saw the survivors’ patriarch beheaded in an attack on the prison by the revenge-obsessed Governor and his followers. “Characters being able to die at any moment means that they don’t die at regularly scheduled intervals,” Gimple added. “I’m very impressed by our audience, and they give us the confidence to experiment, and to play around with the narrative. “To me that’s in general where TV’s going, where the audience doesn’t want the exact same thing every week.”


That story, as viewers of last night’s episode saw, involved Rick going full Mike Tyson and ripping out an enemy’s throat with his teeth to save his son Carl, as well as the Michonne and Daryl Dixon characters, from a vengeance-seeking gang. “This ending for the season was planned from the start of the season because we did need to know where we were going, and what Rick’s journey would be,” Gimple said of the sheriff’s return to his leadership role with the group of survivors, a position he had abdicated when the season opened. “I talk about living through the moments that lead to the moment,” the showrunner added. “And for Rick, him saying ‘you’re screwing with the wrong people,’ that was ‘the moment.’ ”


Keeping that moment and the narrative a secret is a constant worry, especially with the huge success of the show and the fact that it’s based on a comic series fans scour for clues. The line uttered by Rick at the very end is very similar to one from the comic where the characters find themselves hunted by a group of cannibals. The pile of what seemed to be human bones Rick and the others ran past in Terminus in the season finale could point in a similar direction too. Not that the showrunner is giving anything away on that front. “In reading the comic no one’s going to get exactly what happens, but they will be able to see points of inspiration from it,” Gimple said of executive producer Robert Kirkman‘s co-creation.


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In terms of keeping secret what’s going to happen, the showrunner says he knows some stuff will inevitably leak, but that the production and AMC do all they can to play their scripts close to their chests. “In the production, we have a lot of NDAs, but beyond that we just try to be very careful with our materials, we try to run a tight ship. I will say everybody — the cast, the crew, AMC, Fox — everybody, we’re very invested in having people surprised by the show and see the things happen on the show as they happen on the show and not just hear about them,” Gimple said. “It’s a global show and is a little scary that there’s so much of our episodes floating around, but for the most part we just do our best, at least for the stuff we can actually control.”