No one can deny that The Walking Dead Season 7 was a markedly different batch of episodes than any of the previous seasons. From the arrival of Negan to the introduction of several different all-new communities, viewers were engulfed in all sorts of new sights and sounds. But rather than sprinkling those developments into the overall story, The Walking Dead offered a lot more standalone episodes than normal, leading to some fans' discontent. And those folks should cheer up, as showrunner Scott Gimple has made it pretty clear that the war storyline won't allow for any slowing down.
By virtue of the fact that the narrative has turned into one pretty intense conflict, it's going to affect the structure in ways that make it a bit more kinetic, a bit more breakneck --- shifting away from entire stories in one episode, and sort of fractured over several episodes, with little pieces of each story coming together. . . . Because we knew the way that 7 was going to be structured, and we knew we wanted to mix it up in 8, and we knew what 8 was going to be and how that would dictate a very different kind of structure anyways. So, yeah, things are going to move, and possibly not have the kind of deep dives into characters in single episodes, but rather laying out the pieces as we go on
If you're a Walking Dead fanatic who's familiar with the way Scott Gimple answers questions, then you know to largely read between each "bit more" and "sort of" to pull out the meat of the reply. He's basically saying that we'll probably get more episodes along the lines of "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life," and fewer like "Swear," which could and should factor into The Walking Dead's weekly ratings picking back up a bit from how things went in Season 7.
It doesn't take a much more specific measurement than Nielsen ratings to prove that the slowed-down and honed-in episodes of Season 7 were among the worst in the series' history, all things considered. I can't imagine a better omen signaling a slight change in story structure. In any case, common sense would say that the more battles and aroused anger that's present on The Walking Dead, the more amped-up and kinetic things are going to get. Especially if we've got more of Simon next season. I can't wait!
Of course, this is all assuming that Season 8 actually comes together with conceivable ease. The possibility of the writers strike could be bad news for The Walking Dead -- read more about that here -- but it sounds like Scott Gimple and his team have at least a good outline of where Rick and Negan's big war will go when the show returns. And if that strike does happen and it attempts to stick around for longer than it needs to, we'll send a message to Ezekiel to let Shiva out for a while.
While The Walking Dead doesn't yet have a debut date set for Season 8, we all know that it'll probably get here at some point in October. In the meantime, check out what we know about the upcoming season, and then head to our midseason premiere schedule and our summer TV guide to see all the other shows coming to the small screen in the nearer future.
