The Walking Dead Director Calls Aaron and Father Gabriel “Badasses” in Season 10

The coming Whisperer war cements Aaron (Ross Marquand) and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) as “badasses” in The Walking Dead Season 10, says TWD star-turned-director Michael Cudlitz. Both members of the Alexandria council, Aaron and Gabriel will have big decisions to make as rising tensions in the community near their boiling point. Gabriel already helped defend Alexandria’s gate from waves of walkers when the community was assaulted by an attack that lasted 49 hours, and Aaron went on a dangerous mission outside its walls when he was forced to partner with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). According to Cudlitz, who stepped behind the camera a second time on Sunday’s 10×04, “Silence the Whisperers,” fans of Aaron and Gabriel will be pleased as the season marches on.

“I gotta tell you, these two guys are badasses this year,” Cudlitz said at Walker Stalker Con Atlanta, where he appeared alongside Marquand and Gilliam. “I’ve seen almost all of these, I’ve seen a lot of the episodes and I’ve read everything, and these guys… you guys are gonna be really happy. Really happy.”

Gabriel is one-fourth of the “love quadrangle” centered around girlfriend Rosita (Christian Serratos), a situation already promised to deliver plot twists and turns, while Aaron has sworn off being the good Samaritan. The deaths of Jesus (Tom Payne), Enid (Katelyn Nacon) and Tara (Alanna Masterson) at the hands of the Whisperers means a pissed-off Aaron is dropping the diplomacy.

“I think one of his greatest strengths, prior to the Whisperers coming in, was bringing in good people, which is why he, of course, he brought in the original cast in Season 5,” Marquand previously told ComicBook.com. “But I don’t think that diplomacy works anymore. Not with the Whisperers. And they are just completely unreasonable, insane people. And you have to deal with them the only way you deal with crazy people, which is, unfortunately in this case, to meet their violence with our own violence.”

Aaron’s lust for revenge has left him questioning if the survivors are the villains of someone else’s story. In the Season 10 opener, he asked Michonne (Danai Gurira), “Are we the good guys?”

“I think there’s a lot of validity to that thought process of, ‘Are you the villain of someone’s story? Maybe, fine.’ But I think in this instance, the Whisperers are just blood-thirsty psychos,” Marquand recently told TV Insider. “There’s no goodness to them. So I think in this storyline, I don’t agree with Aaron’s questioning. I think that they are very much the good guys and the Whisperers are the bad guys, if they want to boil it down to such a black-and-white narrative.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.