Ross Marquand Reveals Aaron’s ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 8 Plans

Among the characters undergoing serious changes in The Walking Dead, Alexandria native Aaron might be the chief among them right now.

Aaron, played by Ross Marquand, was introduced as the friendly, welcoming face who brought Rick’s group to the Alexandria Safe-Zone. Now, he is hardened soldier eager to protect the community he has helped build.

While Marquand will join ComicBook NOW for an exclusive interview previewing Episode 100 and Season 8 of The Walking Dead on Thursday evening, the actor spilled some intel regarding his character’s future plans while ComicBook.com visited the set of the zombie drama in May.

“I think Aaron is fully on board with Rick’s plan to fight,” Marquand said. “Aaron, even before the war began, when he was doing war efforts in Africa, working for this NGO, he was still trying very hard to be diplomatic, working with these different warring factions, and now he realizes that a guy like Negan and the Saviors, they don’t respond to diplomacy whatsoever.”

As seen in the Season 8 trailer, Aaron is going to come out guns blazing.

“I think the only way you can defeat a man like that, a psychopath killer who lives by his own code of ethics and no one else’s, is to just fight fire with fire and take him out. And I think Rick is on a singular mission to take him out. And Aaron wants to support him in that.”

Aaron, however, has no lost his morals and become a flat-out killing machine.

“I think he’s a good mix of Morgan and Rick,” Marquand said. “Morgan doesn’t want to fight under any circumstances, he doesn’t want to kill and I think that’s very much a part of Aaron. He wants to believe there’s always a diplomatic solution, but in this case, there just isn’t. And he’s not afraid to pick up and kill people if he needs to.

“Even when he first met Aaron in the car in Season 5, he admitted to having to kill a few people because they tried to kill him, they tried to hurt him, and he’s not about to just lay down and die in order to maintain some semblance of whatever code of ethics or morality he had before the apocalypse began. He’s gonna fight, and he’s gonna have to kill if he has to.”

For more from ComicBook.com’s visit to the set of The Walking Dead, don’t miss ComicBook NOW this week. Exclusive interviews and bonus content will premiere on Thursday at 7 pm ET, exclusively on ComicBook NOW‘s official Facebook Page.

The Walking Dead‘s sibling series Fear the Walking Dead airs Sunday nights at 9 pm ET on AMC. The Walking Dead will return for its eighth season on October 22, 2017. The Season 8 premiere will mark 100 episodes overall for the popular AMC series. For complete coverage and insider info all season long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.