‘The Walking Dead’ Season 9 Episode 6: Who Are You Now?

On Sunday night, AMC will air the sixth episode of The Walking Dead‘s ninth season.

The Walking Dead Episode 9×06 is titled, “Who Are You Now?” The official synopsis for Who Are You Now? reads, “The Survivors encounter unfamiliar faces outside the safety of their community’s walls and must decide whether or not this new group can be trusted.” The episode is directed by Larry Teng on a script from Eddie Guzelian.

One week prior, The Walking Dead aired its final episode with Andrew Lincoln in the role of Rick Grimes. For the first time since the series launched in 2010, The Walking Dead is completely without its leading man with no intention of bringing him back to the series. Instead, a handful of characters will be filling the void left in his absence on Sunday night, with Michonne, Carol, and Judith being chief among them. The episode will also shed a great bit of light on characters such as Rosita, Eugene, and Gabriel, who have been somewhat overlooked in recent seasons.

To conclude Episode 9×05, The Walking Dead underwent a massive time jump which is estimated to have passed about six years. Episode 9×06 picks up in that timeline and stays there for its entirety as the villainous new group of the Whisperers looms.

“There’s so much great story coming up and you know I’ve done a lot of press and talked about Samantha Morton and The Whisperers, and we’ve been teasing a lot of that in this last promo,” The Walking Dead executive producer Greg Nicotero told ComicBook.com. “It really just feels like a different show and in a good way, not in a way where we feel like there’s a void that we have to fill.”

Nicotero and company are particularly excited for the arrival of the Whisperers.

Part of the time jump, what that accomplishes is it gets us sort of past sort of playing, everybody grieving over it and it allows us to really jump into a sort of accelerated storyline where we don’t have to feel like there’s four stories with them grieving what they believe is the loss of Rick,” Nicotero said. “It’s a great device to introduce these new characters and I really love it.”

The new episode on Sunday night will also heavily explore the new characters introduced in the tail end of Episode 9×05: Magna, Yumiko, Connie, Kelly, and Luke. As comic book fans know, these names and faces are going to be sticking around.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 pm ET. Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter and watch ComicBook.com’s After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes.