“The Walking Dead” returns on Sunday, February 12, for the second half of its seventh season. When last we left our heroes, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) was finally ready to rally his troops to go to war against Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his sadistic community of Saviors, but what really excited showrunner Scott M. Gimple was “how it got bigger.”
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Gimple adds, “It wasn’t just the discovery of new places, new groups and the way they live, but how they were living with or around or away from the Saviors. The Saviors are the spoke to all of these different communities. People either react or are affected by them.” Those communities include the “self-sustaining” agrarian Hilltop society led by Gregory (Xander Berkeley), the “positive, thriving” Kingdom led by the “theatrical” Ezekiel (Khary Payton), and the matriarchal Oceanside led by the “pragmatic Natania (Deborah May).
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But “of call the groups, Rick’s is the only one that demonstrated strength that could be a threat to the Saviors,” Gimple explains, “so they’re not giving up an inch dealing with Alexandria. But we’ll see how it all bears out.”
