Last fall it was announced that AMC’s horror series The Walking Dead will end with Season 11. The announcement came as a surprise to many viewers as the Walking Dead universe is always expanding. Series star Jeffrey Dean Morgan revealed whether or not the cast knew the series would be ending in advance.
Whenever a show gets that announcement, it can be a huge surprise for just about everybody, especially when it’s a show that seemed capable of going on forever. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who has played Negan on the series since Season 6, told Collider that the news was a surprise to everybody on the series:
The news, when we got it in the middle of the pandemic, was a complete surprise, not only to me and the rest of the actors, but to everybody involved in the show from production. Scott Gimple and Angela Kang had no idea either. It came from nowhere and there was such a huge pivot. I think they had Season 11 all mapped out, where they were going to go, and suddenly it became, ‘We also have to close the story, in a way.’ It took everybody by surprise, so it was a massive pivot. And then, they threw in the six tacked-on episodes to Season 10, and instead of doing 16, we’re going to do 24 more. There was a lot of stuff to wrap our heads around.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan also said that the season will be filmed throughout the entire year, since there’s going to be an additional eight episodes and even though they still have a long way to go, it’s surreal that the show is ending:
That being said, it’s fucking surreal as hell to think that this will be the last bit of it. It’s become such a part of my life, and a part of everyone’s life that’s in the show, that it’s hard to reconcile the fact that this will be over in a year from now. Well, in fact, I will still be here a year from now, but you know what I mean. There’s not a Season 12. It’s very weird… So, in a nutshell, I’m not thinking about the end yet, although it’s back there. We still have a lot of story to tell.
Season 10 of The Walking Dead is still airing and there is no confirmed premiere date for the 11th and finale season. However it will take place over two years so whenever the end of The Walking Dead is, at least fans still have a while.
