The Walking Dead dropped its eighth season trailer during the show’s panel at San Diego Comic Con 2017. And if you were confused by an older Rick Grimes waking up in a bright room during The Walking Dead Season 8 trailer, you are not alone. The teaser ended with the image below:
It definitely threw me off. In the comics, there is a time jump between the group’s first encounter with Negan to the beginning of the All Out War story arc. It made sense as Rick’s group would need time to recover from Glenn’s death. The show, however, started the conflict with Negan right away. It’s likely only a month or two passed before Rick decided to rally the communities and fight Negan.
Well, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman confirmed during the Television Critics Association's summer press tour ( via Hollywood Reporter) the show will dive right into the Old Man Rick mystery when the show returns this fall.
"I'm pretty sure you'll learn in the first episode what that means," Kirkman told reporters, according to Hollywood Reporter.
It’s also important to point Rick isn’t as invincible as the show makes him out to be. In the comics, Rick suffers injuries after his first fight with Negan. Comic book Rick also lost a hand early on in the story. Kirkman knows fans wants to see the comics come alive on TV, but that can’t always happen narrative-wise.
"You're supposed to be talking about that, and that is an intriguing tidbit that we did throw out there on purpose, and we're hoping that people continue to question how it is that fits into the storyline and what it is," Kirkman said. "Comic book fans know where a scene that looked like that would fall, but it also doesn't seem like we would be getting to that just yet if you were a comic book fan, so there's a mystery to that."
You also have to remember Maggie is pregnant with Glenn’s child. Negan doesn’t know she’s pregnant. No one wants to see Maggie with a big baby bump fighting amongst walkers ready to eat her as well as Saviors ready to put a bullet through her skull. Babies are precious in The Walking Dead universe. Even Negan wouldn’t go as far as a to hurt a pregnant woman. Though we wouldn’t put it past Negan to kidnap her newborn.
Anyway, the show is continuing to get bigger and bigger in scale. The cast is growing, the walker herds are larger and the fight scenes are becoming more complex. The show has a freaking tiger mauling people’s faces. This season is going to be sick.
The Walking Dead Season 8 returns Oct. 22 to AMC.
