'The Walking Dead' Calls Super Bowl 53 A Filler Episode

Super Bowl LIII has been a slow game, dominated by defense and featuring more punts than almost [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Super Bowl LIII has been a slow game, dominated by defense and featuring more punts than almost any game you've ever seen in your life. Much of the discussion on Twitter has been viewers pointing out that it is...well, let's just say not exactly the most exciting Super Bowl ever played.

Chiming in, in agreement, is the official Twitter account for Skybound's The Walking Dead comic book.

It's not even like they weren't excited for the game: earlier today, AMC released a Super Bowl-themed The Walking Dead ad.

(As you can imagine, plenty of the replies are about how if anybody knows what a filler episode looks like, it's The Walking Dead. But that's the risk you take when your TV show makes a tweet like this, whether it is accurate or not.)

Today's trailer was the latest tie-in with the sporting event to launch from AMC, who this weekend hosted a Walking Dead-themed pre-Super Bowl party attended by Reedus, Negan star Jeffrey Dean Morgan and director-producer Greg Nicotero.

The network is heavily pushing its AMC Premiere subscription service, where The Walking Dead 909, 'Adaptation,' is now available to stream one week ahead of its debut on television.

Picking up where the mid-season finale left off — moments after Jesus (Tom Payne) became the first victim claimed by the Whisperers, humans sporting skins made of walker flesh — the first episode of 2019 sees Daryl, Michonne, Aaron (Ross Marquand), Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), Magna (Nadia Hilker) and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) attempt to make it safely to Hilltop amid this new threat.

"You know, every season we lose beloved characters, and it's just part of the story," showrunner Angela Kang previously told Deadline of the decision to kill Jesus when introducing the Whisperers.

"In this case, it has a lot to do with kind of, the character that Jesus is, and what he stood for in the show. There needs to be a big loss in the introduction of this new threat to our communities. It's a marker of how serious this problem is, and there's a lot of story that comes from this loss. With that, I have to say that I think Tom Payne as Jesus really did a great job playing what was an incredibly heroic end for this character that has been very fun to write for over the years."

The Walking Dead Season Nine continues with new episodes Sunday, February 10 on AMC.

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