The Walking Dead Season 10 Finale Delay Explained by Showrunner

The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang addresses the postponed Season 10 finale airing as a special episode later this year, promising what was once the penultimate episode of the season, “The Tower,” is a “big episode.” Days ago, AMC confirmed the finale would not meet its scheduled Sunday, April 12 premiere date, saying in a statement current events — referring to the coronavirus pandemic — makes it “impossible” to complete the required post-production work on the Greg Nicotero-directed episode that sees Beta (Ryan Hurst) engage the final battle of the Whisperer War by invading Alexandria with his walker army.

“I think it’s disappointing for all of us that work on the show. Everybody works so hard, our post production team, all of our vendors who are partners with us, everybody was really kind of racing against the clock,” Kang told EW. “But as everything was unfolding worldwide, we have people around the world that work on our VFX and so people were having to start moving things remotely. But there’s just certain parts of the post-process that are very difficult to move remotely, and everything that moves remotely works slower because it’s like rendering these giant effects.”

She continued, “If you don’t know that technical language, it’s like once they finish the stuff, the machines basically work on it to spit out a beautiful version of it, which we drop into the show. Everything just takes longer.”

Kang also echoed comments made by Nicotero and executive producer Scott Gimple, who said the safety of the Walking Dead team is being prioritized over the episode meeting its planned air date.

“There’s certain processes that couldn’t be moved before California shutdown for business. And it just couldn’t be done,” Kang added. “And it’s people’s health and safety are first and foremost on our minds as well during all of this. So we will at some point air this amazing finale, but also, I really love how episode 15 came out. People did amazing work on it. It will feel like there’s kind of an epic, wonderful end to it. And even that one kind of came in really under the wire.”

Like with the penultimate episode of Season 9, “The Storm,” which ended with Michonne (Danai Gurira), Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) discovering nearly one dozen victims murdered by Alpha (Samantha Morton), big things are in store for “The Tower.”

“A lot of times our penultimate is a big episode as well, and that’s the case here. There are huge stakes for everybody that’s involved, and so it will feel like there’s some danger for people at the end of it,” Kang said. “And then I’m just really excited for people to come back, and once we’re able to finish out what we’re doing on the finale, for everybody to see that too. But hopefully it’ll be a really exciting kind of end to the season with these last couple episodes.”

Work on Season 11 of The Walking Dead is currently progressing remotely.

“The Tower” premieres Sunday, April 5 at 9/8c on AMC. The cabler has not yet announced a new air date for episode 1016, “A Certain Doom.”