Season 8 of The Walking Dead will be even more explosive than before, and that's not an exaggeration — the cast all agree that this season is going to be about the action.
Father Gabriel, played by Seth Gilliam, tells Entertainment Weekly, "[this season is] like a Schwarzenegger versus Stallone action thing from the ’80s. I think there are, like, 10 explosions an episode. Every time you turn around, somebody’s shooting something or blowing something up. There’s some serious action that I don’t think we’ve seen on television since The A-Team went off the air."
When we last left the scrappy band of survivors, the powder keg of Rick and Negan's communities are finally lit, and the two factions explode into all-out war. And with these two loose cannons leading the charge, it can only mean that someone is going to die.
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Indeed, showrunner Scott Gimple, who is returning for season 8, confirms that there will be deaths, even if the body count isn't necessarily at massacre level. "There are some big deaths this season, but I think they’ll possibly catch people by surprise." The Walking Dead is notoriously tight-lipped and fiercely protective of the set from spoilers, so we won't even try to speculate — but things are not looking good for Rick.
Despite the deaths that will probably ruin us for days, the cast offers assurances that the action will be worth it. "We’ve been knocked clear off our feet," says Danai Gurira, who plays Michonne, Rick's girlfriend. Austin Amelio, who plays Dwight, says "It’s a f —ing in-your-face action-packed IV of adrenaline. Season 7 was the ramp-up and now this is the blastoff. The stuff that’s happening is insane!" It sounds like the cast is just as excited for season 8 as the rest of us.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC on October 22.