'The Walking Dead' will be a 'completely new show' after season 8

The Walking Dead, you know the one. That show about zombies that’s constantly killing people off left, right and centre.  You know the one. Anyway, it’s been going for eight seasons now, which is a lot of seasons, mate - Breaking Bad only had five, and that went on for 35 years.

Thing is, the show is showing no signs of stopping, even after this latest season, so what do you do to keep things fresh? Well, you unfurl a paper clip and you stick one end down the thin reset hole, don’t you? You start again.

Showrunner-turned-chief content officer Scott Gimple says of the finale:

“This episode isn’t just like these 15 episodes coming to a conclusion, but Angela and myself and the writers had always talked about this in many ways being sort of the conclusion of the first eight seasons.

“This show will be very much a new show next year and with a bigger, new narrative. It was something I was really excited about getting into even before season eight. And so there was just a certain weight in the air of the kind of conclusion that we were getting closer to. It was a weird graduation for everybody.”

Makes sense, to start over - stops things getting stale. It’s still set in the same world - we’re not talking an American Horror Story-type situation here - but I assume it means a bit of cast reshuffle and a focus on a different band of survivors with their own storylines.

Gimple continues:

“With [so] many characters reaching the conclusion of the story that we’ve been laying out for them over the past few years in some regards, there’s just a lot going on, and a lot of perspectives that we’re shifting between and some very, very big emotional and philosophical movement between just some unbelievably insane things happening.”

Exciting words, Gimple, exciting words.

(Image:Getty)