The Walking Dead’s Ross Marquand Talks Taking The Blame And Aaron

Spoilers follow for tonight’s, “Now,” episode of The Walking Dead.

In episode five of season six, Aaron humbly stepped in front of what’s left of the Alexandria community to explain that the Wolves finding the community was his fault. No one hugged him. No one said he was wrong. He was left out there, feeling guilty, in need of redemption.

ComicBook.com had the chance to speak with Aaron actor, Ross Marquand, about the episode, more Aaron and Eric in the future, and more. Check out some of our interview below, offering insight to Aaron’s world, and stay tuned tom ComicBook.com for more of our chat with Marquand coming up.

CB: I like to offer the fans of the show the opportunity to get their questions in and start off with one, so this time, Comicbook Rob wants to know, “Aaron is still alive in the comics, would you be willing to stay with the show until season 10? 15?”

RM: If we should be so lucky to be on that long, it’s amazing that we just heard the news that season seven got picked it… As I was talking to our costume designer today, we were remarking about how massive and devoted this fanbase is and it started out as this really relatively small zombie show with only six episodes in that first season. It was not a guarantee that it was gonna go two seasons. There was no certainty whatsoever, so the fact that it has become this massive show is not only mind blowing but it’s actually very humbling. I think all of us arevery aware that the fans have made this show what it is. If the producers, if the writers think that that storyline involves Aaron, I would absolutely stay on for 10 or 15 years. I would love that. It’s one of my favorite shows, too. It’s a dream come true to me. Every time I go to set, I realize, I’m working on one of my favorite shows. So, absolutely. Most definitely.

In the “Now,” episode, Aaron goes out in front of everybody and takes the blame. How much did that take out of Aaron and why does him blame himself so much? These people probably would’ve found Alexandria eventually anyway!

Myself, as an actor, I very much want to give Aaron a hug, too, and say, “It’s not your fault!” and just kind of have a little Good Will Hunting moment… You know, truthfully, I don’t think it’s his fault. There’s not Google Maps anymore. It’s not like they can extrapolate certain details of geographically topography by certain pictures alone. You really have to know where that location was. I think it was, truthfully, just enough to pique the Wolves interest and they must’ve somehow put two and two together. Maybe they passed by the walls of Alexandria and thought, “Who knows what that is,” but then they saw the pictures and thought, “There might be people inside,” and they might’ve scoped it out. I didn’t get into too much of the hows and the whys of the Wolves actually finding the community, but I do know this: it really was incumbent upon Aaron to feel guilty for that and to take that blame.

Even though he doesn’t want that responsibility and the blame of taking it on, I think the big mantra is a good portion of how the Wolves made it back is indirectly/directly related to what he’s done. It was like the biggest accident on the planet. He was almost gonna get his neck bit and then Daryl comes and swings that knife down and kills the walker and so I dropped the backpack just because I’m in the middle of almost being killed. But truthfully, that was just very much an accident. I think he’s the type of guy who even from the beginning, he holds the weight of the world on his shoulders. He feels like he’s responsible for the people in the community. He feels like he’s responsible for Rick’s group. He wantsto prove to them that he is still a good guy and can still make amends for this terrible things that he feels responsible for.

One thing we haven’t seen much of is Eric and Aaron together this season. Will we see more of that this season?

There are so many characters in this ensemble that it’s really difficult to maintain the storylines for everything but I think you will definitely see more of Aaron and Eric as the season goes on. You’ll see that Eric, who has been very supportive this entire time and hoping for the best for Aaron although he cannot fight because of his ankle issue, he still very much understands that Aaron has a desire to go out and fight and he supports him even though he would secretly love to have him stay back and be with him a little longer because he just came back from almost being killed with Daryl. They love each other and they miss each other a great deal. That’s something that will certainly be explored later in the season.

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The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 PM ET on AMC.