‘The Walking Dead’ Revives Dead Character For Flashback Scene

The Walking Dead brought a dead character back to life in flashback form on Sunday night.

Spoilers for The Walking Dead Episode 9×11 follow. Major spoilers!

To start Sunday night’s episode, The Walking Dead brought King Ezekiel, Jerry, and Carol to TV screen’s for the first time in 2019. However, in their Season 9B debut, the Kingdom characters arrived in flashback form where they were met by Tara Chambler and Paul “Jesus” Rovia.

In the present timeline, Tom Payne’s Jesus character was killed by the Whisperers. There is no indication of exactly when this meeting from Episode 9×11 occurred but it is clearly some time after Rick Grimes flew off with Jadis in Episode 9×05 and before the Whisperers killed Jesus. It also appeared to be after Maggie left the Hilltop to spend time with Georgie at her mysterious community.

It shouldn’t come us much of a surprise that Payne reprised the role of Jesus in Episode 9×11. The actor teased a return to the series in flashback form several times.

“There is a six year time jump between Episode 5 and Episode 6, so you maybe might see what happened with Jesus in those six years,” Payne told Good Day LA in November. “As far as this point in the timeline goes, at this point, he’s done-zo.”

Still, the actor insisted he is satisfied with his characters sendoff from Episode 9×08, although he wishes to have seen more from his role earlier in the series.

“All I care about is the story, and if the story is good, and they do it in the right way, then I don’t care,” Payne told ComicBook.com. “And if I help to tell that story, in a cool, surprising, and shocking way, then I’m down with that, and I think they really did that with the exit. So I’m super happy actually. I loved my beginning on the show, and I loved my ending on the show. The middle was meh, but the end was really cool and I’m really, really happy with that. So, yeah, I think it was kind of a mutual thing.”

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.