As seasons of AMC's The Walking Dead have gone by and the show has gotten deeper into the zombie apocalypse, viewers have began to wonder why the characters aren't running out of resources to a greater degree. There was a major issue with the amount of bullets fired last season, and how are they keeping all these cars running years after the world's collapse?
There's going to be a time jump between the season 8 finale and this fall's season 9 premiere, and new showrunner Angela Kang has revealed to Entertainment Weekly that when we catch up with The Walking Dead's characters again, time will also be catching up with them.
Kang told EW,
We’ll explore what happened as man made objects and structures break down. Infrastructure like roads and bridges are changing and crumbling. And we’ll also explore what happens as resources are getting low. There’s a fun Western vibe that has emerged. We are going into a period where a lot of the things that we’ve seen in previous seasons have broken down, so they’ve got these horses and carriages that are being drawn around instead of cars. Things are lit with oil lamps. People are using different kinds of weaponry. There’s a real grittiness to it that I think will be fun and fresh for the viewers."
To give a preview of the new circumstances characters will be dealing with, the showrunner shared a picture of Michonne (Danai Gurira) on horseback, accompanied by other apocalypse survivors with horse-drawn carriages.
I have my worries about the upcoming season, especially with the characters of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) reportedly being written out in just a handful of episodes, but the idea of the show taking on a Western style with horses and oil lamps is very appealing to me.
The Walking Dead season 9 is likely to begin airing on AMC in October.