Andrew Lincoln Says By End Of The Walking Dead Season 5 The Show Will Have More Characters Than Ever Before

02/08/2015 01:15 am EST

In his new interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln teased a major development in the second half of season five that will make the show's world much larger than it's been in the past.

"I think by the end of the season we're carrying more characters than we've ever had in the whole other five years, and that's what I mean about the plate spinning," Lincoln told EW. "I think [showrunner Scott Gimple] and the writers have just done an extraordinary job about really filling out and giving story arcs and extraordinarily emotional journeys to a substantial amount of principal actors. I said it before: I don't think it's an ensemble anymore—it's a show of leading actors."

The comments are presumably an indicator that certain stories comic book fans have been expecting for quite a while are going to begin to play out soon.

"I think that if you look at our season five B poster, there's a map and there's a line drawn on that map," series creator Robert Kirkman recently said. "So I believe it was Glenn or somebody had the argument of look, even if Eugene's wrong, Washington would have infrastructure, Washington would be the place where they would be prepared for this kind of cataclysm. Washington would be a place where they would have resources stored up and plans in place. And so if there's any place near us, and honestly we're not geographically that far away, that would be a place where we could possibly find safety because where else are we going to go? And so it's entirely possible that when we get back they're going to Washington."

Of course, about an hour's car ride from Washington is Alexandria, Virginia, a town which in the comics has walls around it and represents a "Safe Zone" where Rick and company have lived since shortly after the fall of the prison. And dozens of new characters.

Asked about Alexandria, and whether the casting of Alexandria native Aaron means something for the upcoming midseason, Kirkman answered, "You know, look: There are certainly fan favorite characters from the comic books that people are excited to get into the show, and I think that Aaron is one of them. Aaron's a character that's still around in the comic book series and has certainly been on a lot of adventures and has had a lot of memorable story line stuff, and as characters to be adapted from the comic book series go, certainly a big one. You know, the timelines do seem to be aligning, but you never know. We could be throwing you a curve ball. We could be bringing in a character from much later and bringing that up earlier. You never know with us. We could have changed things up. Or you could be exactly right."

The Walking Dead returns on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PM  on AMC.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.