AMC's zombie drama is pushing ahead following the season nine departure of Andrew Lincoln.
The Walkers just keep coming!
The Walking Dead has been renewed for a 10th season, showrunner Angela Kang announced on Instagram on Monday. The news comes just months after the departure of the show's main character, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), who will instead become the focus of a series of feature-length movies.
"Season 10! #twd#thewalkingdead," Kang, who took over as showrunner from Scott M. Gimple in season nine, wrote alongside a zombie-filled teaser video. The AMC series is currently halfway through its ninth season, returning on Sunday after its midseason finale in November. Season 10 will debut in October 2019.
The series continued after Lincoln's departure in November with a six-year time jump, focusing on Michonne (Danai Gurira), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and other characters as they moved on after believing Rick had died after a bridge explosion. (He survived the blast and was instead carried off via helicopter.)
"It’s giving us the opportunity to tell the story of leadership with the characters that are left behind," Kang told ET following Lincoln's exit episode. "The story picks up still six years later, Rick’s presence and his influence are definitely felt in the way that they either try to uphold messages that he believed or the way that they’ve drifted from those things. But that memory is very much alive and we’ll learn in the aftermath days that they looked for him, and looked for him."
"We kind of deal with characters who were not able to find the closure that they wanted and that’s definitely something that weighs on everybody. We’ll see also that Rick was really many steps ahead of people in terms of envisioning what the future might be like if they don’t all get it together to work together. He knew that bridge -- both metaphorically, but also very literally -- connected these communities, so that’s very much a part of the story we tell going forward and I’m excited for people to see that."
The Walking Dead returns Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC. See more in the video below.
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