‘The Walking Dead’ Creator Robert Kirkman Explains The Need For Slow Periods On The Show

The Walking Dead has long been accused of being slow or dragging its feet — it was a frequent complaint in season 7 last year — but in a new interview with Forbes, creator and executive producer Robert Kirkman details why it’s necessary for the show to slow down.

“I think that any perceived slowing down is that we the need to take our time to set up the situations that we’re going to be paying off,” Kirkman said. “There’s a tremendous amount of shoe leather that needs to be dealt with the Saviors and how they work, Negan and who he is, establishing a status quo. We have a luxury with The Walking Dead that we have a large audience so we can slow things down and get into the nuance of things.”

Season 8 will adapt Volume 20 of the comic book, “All Out War,” which saw Rick Grimes (played in the show by Andrew Lincoln) leading a united front of the Alexandria, Hilltop and Kingdom survivors in a revolt against Negan (played in the show by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his army of oppressive Saviors. The show’s cast and crew have been promising an action-packed season, with showrunner Scott M. Gimple adding to the hype by saying the earliest episodes of season 8 are “just break neck speed and full of action.”

Kirkman acknowledges the audience’s criticisms about slower periods, but reiterates the need for the show to take a breather.

“I feel like here’s always a tremendous payoff,” he said. “But we do hear from the audience that ‘This is a down period, this is a slow period.’ I hope people would recognize that the slow periods, they’re absolutely essential to the high periods. If the show was high octane, all action at all times, if it was big characters dying non stop you would grow numb to that pretty quickly. Being able to pull the reins back and slow the show down is essential to longevity.”

The Walking Dead isn’t ending any time soon — Gimple is on the record as saying “We are trying to do twenty years” — and Kirkman says those slow periods aren’t a way to prevent the show from getting ahead of the comics.

“It’s not an effort to stretch story,” Kirkman added. “If anything, we have more story than we’re ever going get to. The comic comes out every month, there’s plenty of material being put together for that each and every month.”

The Walking Dead airs its season 8 opener, also the series’ landmark 100th episode, Sunday, October 22 at 9/8c on AMC.