The Walking Dead Showrunner Teases Walker Variants

Walkers. Lurkers. Roamers. The zombies of The Walking Dead have a new name as another breed emerges: “Variants.” “I’ve heard stories of walkers that can climb walls and open doors,” says Aaron (Ross Marquand) in the trailer for the final episodes. “I was never sure if they were just stories.” The rumors are true. These mutated walkers — which date back to the first season of The Walking Dead — are among the first encountered by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Morgan Jones (Lennie James). And in the last eight episodes (premiering October 2 on AMC and AMC+), these walker variants live again. 

“We know that we have some different kinds of walkers in the show already. We started the season with this idea of the lurkers, which are the ones that can go dormant sometimes but are still dangerous when they wake back up,” explained executive producer and showrunner Angela Kang on Sunday’s The Walking Dead: The Final Episodes Preview special. “The people that watched the pilot really, really closely, might have noticed some zombies climbing up a fence in the background.”

In the 2010 pilot, “Days Gone Bye,” Georgia’s walkers “turned doorknobs and grabbed [stuffed] bunnies up from the ground,” noted Kang. The survivors would later relocate to Virginia and now Ohio, home of the Commonwealth, the post-apocalyptic civilization under threat from a massive swarm of regional walker variants. 

“We just think that, depending on where you’re at, there may be walkers that develop a bit differently at times,” Kang teased. “We’ve never seen them en masse somewhere, so you’ll have to watch and see.”

This breed of seemingly smarter, faster, and stronger zombies exist in other parts of the walker apocalypse. A post-credits coda ending The Walking Dead: World Beyond revealed CDC virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emerich) was aware of these “variant cohorts” since 2010, when he was in contact with a French doctor researching the effects of reanimation.

12 years into the Walking Dead apocalypse, “We sort of played into that as if there might be certain walkers in certain regions that might have different abilities that we really haven’t seen before,” series director and executive producer Greg Nicotero recently told EW. “We’re kind of playing into the idea that some of these are out there and they’re just encountering them now.”

The Walking Dead: The Last Episodes begin October 2 on AMC and with a two-episode premiere on AMC+.

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