The Walking Dead’s season 9 will explore ‘complicated’ relationships between Rick, Maggie and Daryl
Society has crumbled. People must build from the ground up. But “complicated” relationships could get in the way on the next season of The Walking Dead.
When The Walking Dead returns this October, we’re going to see a new setting thanks to a time jump, and the storyline will delve into core characters and their relationships, such as Rick, Maggie and Daryl.
Entertainment Weekly recently shared an exclusive first look at the new chapter for the show, with Michonne pictured leading a group of new survivors on horseback.
New showrunner Angela Kang says the ninth season will be an exploration of society after it has quite literally crumbled.
"We’ll explore what happened as man made objects and structures break down. Infrastructure like roads and bridges are changing and crumbling. And we’ll also explore what happens as resources are getting low… We are going into a period where a lot of the things that we’ve seen in previous seasons have broken down, so they’ve got these horses and carriages that are being drawn around instead of cars. Things are lit with oil lamps. People are using different kinds of weaponry. There’s a real grittiness to it that I think will be fun and fresh for the viewers."
Along with photos previewing how season 9’s moved forward, Entertainment Weekly just shared a preview of Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon for season 9. Not much can be discerned from the photo of our favorite crossbow-wielding bad boy. The only key detail is that he’s standing amongst some crops, showing some agricultural growth.
Kang also offered fresh details about what we can expect to see from our characters.
"We’ll see a lot of the core relationships. We’ll be delving into those and seeing how people are thinking about bigger problems. And thinking about their philosophies, and thinking about how people come together and create civilization and what those rules are going to be, and how you contend with it. And I think that there’ll be some really interesting storylines for people who care about some of these characters that we’ve been following for years. Because they are family at this point, and they love each other. They respect each other, but those relationships are very complicated. So, we’ll see our group together working in unity in a lot of ways. But you’ll also see some changes in the way that they deal with each other."
At the end of season 8, a conflict was already bubbling. Maggie and Daryl disagreed with Ricks decision to offer Negan mercy versus killing him. Jesus joined Maggie and Daryl’s side, while Rick assumingly has Michonne in his corner. From the looks of things, Rick has a pretty complicated situation to deal with already.
“There will definitely be story about Maggie and Daryl and Rick and where they are at with each other,” Kang told Entertainment Weekly.
“I don’t want to spoil too much about that storyline, but there will be some surprises along the way with it. It’s definitely something that we will be exploring this season.”
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We hope to see more, including a season 9 trailer, during The Walking Dead’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con.