AMC has published The Walking Dead Season 10 character posters ahead of the new season's Oct. 6 premiere.
Featured here are main players Daryl (Norman Reedus), Michonne (Danai Gurira), Carol (Melissa McBride), Judith (Cailey Fleming), and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), alongside Whisperer foes Alpha (Samantha Morton) and Beta (Ryan Hurst).
This next season will deepen the survivors' conflict with the Whisperers, the walker skin-wearing enemies forcing the communities to respect the imposed borderlines erected by Alpha in the penultimate episode of Season 9 — there Alpha committed an act of terror when she displayed ten victims' decapitated heads on pikes marking Whisperer territory.
Some traumatized survivors, now suffering from PTSD, will have to overcome the paranoia stirred by Alpha and her followers as they militarize themselves ahead of a fight that may be unavoidable.
"Both sides are wondering, 'Are people sneaking into our territory? Is there a way that we can turn people on the other side?'" showrunner Angela Kang recently told TVLine. "There's a much more tense, kind of crackling feel to the way they're interacting with each other as tensions continue to mount. And there are lots of plot twists and turns within that tension as it amps up over time."
Because we're now "in a different time in the apocalypse" — the world has belonged to the dead for nearly a decade — a clash between both sides won't be fought with bullets and guns, but with less conventional weapons matching the unconventional methods of the disguised Whisperers.
"From the trailer, you can see that [our protagonists are] training with different kinds of weapons. They've kind of moved into a more forged/medieval style that the blacksmiths are making," Kang said. "In this world, our people have the ability to manufacture bullets, but is that really the best use of resources or time, given that, when you're dealing with a lot of zombies for the most part, you want something that's reusable, that you can have in hand that's hefty — quiet, too. Bullets are going to just draw more zombies. Our people have learned to fight in a different, more collaborative way."
The survivors and the Whisperers have their weapons at the ready in the gallery of character posters below. The Walking Dead returns to AMC with its Season 10 premiere Sunday, October 6 at 9/8c.
