Carol And Ezekiel are Officially Together in ‘The Walking Dead’

During The Walking Dead Season Nine preview special on Sunday night, new showrunner Angela Kang confirmed Carol and Ezekiel will have developed a romantic relationship.

After a fan submitted question was posed to Kang, the woman in charge of the AMC show’s upcoming episode confirmed that after a time jump the two survivors will be committing to one another. Many fans have suspected a wedding between the two characters but such details were held during the time jump.

“I’m personally having a lovely time,” King Ezekiel actor Khary Payton said. “Working with Melissa is always amazing. I always say she is the best acting coach I’ve ever had! It just so happens, I don’t have to pay her. Whatever I’m feeling about a scene, she can say something or point something out, and my world changes.”

With The Walking Dead having flirted with the idea of having Daryl Dixon and Carol explore a romantic relationship, the two will remain close moving forward, though their bond remains platonic.

“It’s not that Carol and Daryl don’t have their special time,” Kang said.

Kang had previously teased new relationships coming forward on The Walking Dead as a huge narrative driver for the upcoming episodes. “We want to show what happens to people over time, the ways in which they change and grow,” she told TheWrap. “We want to look at these, like, very long-standing relationships between the characters who are now all so, so different from when we first met them.”

The Season Nine key art only featured some of the shows longest running characters: Rick, Daryl, Maggie, Carol, and Michonne. Each character has changed significantly, but will also have interesting relationships with some of the show’s newer faces — such as a dynamic between Carol and Ezekiel which was teased but never cemented in previous seasons.

“There will be some intriguing new people that our people run across,” Kang added. “”We’re going to be looking a lot at what it means to have a civilization.”

Season Nine will look at “just how much the world around them is starting to degrade, like you know, the man-made things of the world,” Kang says. “The buildings, the infrastructure, it’s all changing and nature is kind of taking back over in some ways, and that’s going to create a lot of interesting challenges for our people to overcome in the course of the season.”

As Season Nine aims to “jump ahead in time”, the new batch of episodes is the beginning of “a new chapter of the show,” with Kang at the helm.

The Walking Dead will return for its ninth season in the fall. Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on AMC, returning for the second half of its fourth season on August 12. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter.