As the new showrunner of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead,‘ Angela Kang will need to deal with lower viewership and burnout from those who remain, but she has a plan to change that. In fact, part of what she wants to change in the series is a return to a few key elements from earlier seasons that she enjoyed and are something that she feels resonated with fans. With the series already slated to lose Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes and Lauren Cohan as Maggie Greene, possibly for good, there is quite a bit stacked against her.
That being said, the aspects which Kang would like to see brought back are something that I know I’d like to see more of in a series which has become convoluted over the years. While we’ve seen a group of survivors evolve over the years, being alone in an open area was both majestic and terrifying in the early seasons which is something that we’ve been lacking as of late and according to Kang:
“I wanted to kind of try to aspire to recapture some of that feeling of the silences and just like those beautiful, wide landscapes and just the loneliness that can be in the world. Except, now we’re in a part where we really – that the characters have found this group and they are very tight with each other. And so, you get to feel that, the warmth between them while there’s also conflicts.”
I’m all for this and with a horde of walkers on the horizon, likely being controlled by The Whisperers, this kind of a feeling could be brought back even in a group scenario. Greg Nicotero believes that “going back to what made The Walking Dead great, when we first started watching the show” is the goal of Season 9 and part of that will be spending more time with the characters. However, too much time with the characters and not enough action or suspense is a frequent reason which has been cited for turning audiences off and something that they’ll hopefully keep in mind. According to Nicotero:
“The first episode, all the scenes that I shot that it’s like Daryl and Carol, and Daryl and Maggie, they’re all isolated. There’s nobody else in those frames. I wanted you to be leaning in and listening to everything that they’re saying because they say more than two, three f–king things. They have real conversations – conversations that you give a shit about, and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s what Rick is feeling. That’s what Daryl’s feeling. They’re actually talking.’ And it’s the first time we’ve done that in a long time. There’s not those little ellipses, like dot-dot-dot, and you leave it hanging out there.”
Put in that perspective, the new scenes could very well resonate with fans. He also compares the way that they’re doing things to the second season of the show. While I was worried about that for a moment, he does bring up a critical point, and that is: “Season 2, that’s when we fell in love with Daryl, that’s when we fell in love with Carol, that’s when – because we took the time.”
Do you agree with the type of moments which Angela Kang wants to recapture from early seasons of ‘The Walking Dead’ in her upcoming run on the series? Will this keep fans from getting bored with the series and continue to come back for more? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Screen Rant
