The Walking Dead Episode 1020: White-Armored Soldiers Return in “Splinter” Preview

The Walking Dead will resolve a months-long cliffhanger ending when Princess (Paola Lazaro) proves to be a thorn in the side of some white-armored soldiers in next week’s “Splinter.” In the October season finale, “A Certain Doom,” Eugene (Josh McDermitt) had a date with destiny when he traveled with King Ezekiel (Khary Payton) and Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura) to Charleston, West Virginia, where he was to rendezvous with radio contact Stephanie (Margot Bingham). After picking up Princess along the way, the survivors expected to meet Stephanie — instead, they were apprehended by a small army of armored soldiers serving a New World Order.

In “Splinter,” premiering March 21, Princess struggles with memories of her traumatic past and tries to escape with Ezekiel’s help.

“The one episode that’s coming up, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole big story to be played,” showrunner Angela Kang teased during The Walking Dead Extended Season 10 Preview Special. “There’s more characters within that group to meet, but we will start to get into them a bit, get a sense of their vibe, what they’re about, through our characters’ perspective. But there’s so much more cool story to come in Season 11.”

The soldiers serve the Commonwealth Army, the military force commanded by Mercer (Season 11 newcomer Michael James Shaw). The soldiers are just a small part of an as-yet-revealed and expansive civilization our survivors will soon encounter in the eleventh and final season.

“Here’s this group, they show up, they’re wearing this white armor which is not super practical, but also they had to create these uniforms. It’s really cool in a comic when you’ve got this look, but it’s like, ‘What does it mean about this group that they’re part of?’” Kang said. “They had to have some ability to create these things and keep them clean and make them all look the same, but they’re also ingenious because they’ve got these sort of like automatic weapons that they’ve also transformed with a bayonet, so it’s the old and the new all mixed together.”

What that means, Kang added, “It tells you that this group is really formidable, they are organized, they have some access to the materials that you need to create in a uniform fashion, so that’s really unlike some of the groups that we’ve seen. Because our groups have only been able to do things like that on a very limited basis, like [how] Eugene was only able to make a handful of perfect bullets. But these guys have a lot more going on.”

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. New episodes of The Walking Dead extended Season 10 premiere Sundays at 9 pm ET/8c on AMC; Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 returns with new episodes on April 11.