The Walking Dead’s Final Episodes Will Be Bigger Than Ever in Epic-Sized Season 11

The Walking Dead is "back to being big" when it returns this summer with the start of its expanded and epic-sized final season, says showrunner Angela Kang. After airing its six smaller bonus chapters in the extended Season 10 — the first episodes produced after the coronavirus shuttered the world of The Walking Dead for most of 2020 — AMC's zombie drama is coming back to life with bigger-than-ever episodes in Season 11. The final season will air 24 episodes instead of the standard 16, and producers have promised a return to the "massive scope and scale" from seasons past when Season 11 launches on August 22.

"When we start [the final season], we're rockin' and rollin'. We're back to being big and scope-y. There's going to be a feeling that things are just ripping along for the first block," Kang told TVLine about the eight-episode first part of Season 11. "Then we're going for some different tonal things than we're used to on the show, which hopefully will be fun for the audience."

Season 11 starts as a scary on-the-road show, and as Daryl (Norman Reedus) and his band of survivors new friends and foes alike, each will bring a different flavor to The Walking Dead. Season 10, which pit our heroes against Alpha (Samantha Morton) and her Whisperers, started out with a cold war vibe before becoming a paranoia-riddled thriller.

"As we meet more than one kind of new community, every story will have its own vibe. So some of them may go into types of genres that haven't been really explored on the show before," Kang told TVLine. "My hope is that it will feel like we're still finding things that are new, even in the final season, but also that we're just moving right along."

When announcing the show's August 22 return date, Walking Dead chief content officer Scott Gimple teased audiences can anticipate eight action-packed episodes to start a season that won't conclude until late 2022.

"Coming off of the six additional episodes for Season 10, which focused on smaller, character-driven stories, we're excited to kick off Season 11 bigger than ever," Kang said in the April statement. "The stakes will be high — we'll see more zombies, tons of action, intriguing new stories, never-before-seen locations and our groups together in one community for the first time, trying to rebuild what the Whisperers took from them."

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. The Final Season of The Walking Dead begins Sunday, August 22, on AMC.