Showrunner Angela Kang shares behind-the-scenes intel on opening flashback montages that will begin each of the remaining 11C episodes.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for theWalking Deadseason 11C premiere, “Lockdown.”
The end ofThe Walking Deadis going all the way back to the beginning.
Andrew Lincoln on ‘The Walking Dead’.AMC
There were more dead than living, and it started to look like the world would go cold."
What was the inspiration for this throwback?
How was it put together?
Jon Bernthal on ‘The Walking Dead’.Scott Garfield/AMC
And will we see more of these scenes throughout the season?
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s talk about the very start of the episode.
Where did this idea come from?
Jeffrey Dean Morgan on ‘The Walking Dead’.Jace Downs/AMC
And I think the story for our characters is, can we grow from who we were before?
It’s one of those things that just kind of seem to work for the story we were telling.
So these are going to continue throughout the rest of the season?
Laila Robins and Teo Rapp-Olsson on ‘The Walking Dead’.Jace Downs/AMC
There’s a bit of a concept to these.
Are these modeled or inspired by the end of theWalking Deadcomic with Carl reading to his kid?
And so that is one of the pieces of inspiration that goes into this, without being literal.
How are you going to thematically organize them?
In this one, we saw some big villains.
Will other opening montages focus on other things?
And so you’ll have to watch and see how it all plays out.
But also, if you listen to the voice-overs, it’s telling a story, too.
Lord knows you had plenty of options to choose from.
What is it like putting these together and deciding what are those most impactful and emotional images to use?
These montages were actually really, really hard to cut.
Every version of them started with writers writing them.
And so a lot of times the writers picked certain shots to include that felt maybe thematically appropriate.
But then, of course, it has to work as a picture.
So then the editors did their pass.
And every single version of the editor’s initial pass was too long.
You want to get into the story.
But it gave us a wealth of options to choose from.
And I love when directors come in with a vision for some of this stuff.
So I think it’s truly a collaboration.
Sometimes there’s even just stuff like clearance issues that are going on behind the scenes.
Okay, let’s get into a few other things: Why does Mercer let Negan into the Commonwealth?
With Mercer, he’s been on kind of a journey throughout the season too.
You see that he really has very mixed feelings about the things that happen in the Commonwealth.
He’s kind of in that headspace.
What can you say about these Hornsby goons that Carol and the kids are hiding from?
And we’ve seen both of them before.
But he can also be scary and an operator.
And what do our people care?
They’re going to head out of here.
And I don’t think that that calculation is necessarily wrong on Carol’s part.
What can you say about what’s coming up next?
And all parties need to figure out, is there a way forward?
Is this all going to explode into war?
What’s going to happen next?
And I don’t think any of them know what the next step is.
