It’s mid August, the kids are going back to school, the weather will hopefully finally cool down and the fall TV shows are coming back soon! We’ll have to wait a little longer for The Walking Dead as it coincides with my favorite holiday, Halloween, but it’s coming and I’m so excited. I just love watching the show, I’m not particularly looking forward to hearing who met the wrong end of Lucille’s bat, but that seems to be all anyone is talking about. You’ve heard my thoughts on that, I found it a particularly manipulative ploy by producers and many other fans feel the same. Both Norman Reedus and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have gone on the defensive on behalf of the showrunners, explaining that there will be a payoff and that we have to trust them, and now they’re bringing out the big guns. Andrew Lincoln himself did an interview in which he addressed it. This is significant because Lincoln doesn’t do as much press as his costars and has only been on The Talking Dead once. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, he’s very diplomatic and understanding about the fact that fans felt betrayed. They should have sent Lincoln out to do this earlier actually.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How surprised were you by the negative reactions that some people had to that cliffhanger and having to wait to find out who had died?
ANDREW LINCOLN: The first time I went to Comic-Con and I heard the reaction to the trailer, I realized that we handed the show over to the fans at that point. It was a done deal. And so, there is a sort of symbiotic relationship with the show and the fanbase, which is also part of a bigger conversation in my opinion. We’re just a small part of a much bigger conversation online. And far be it for me to say someone’s right or wrong.

We love the fans. I love the fact that everybody is so engaged with it and so opinionated about it. I think it’s a great energy that we feed off. I mean, obviously we don’t want a divided reaction every time we do something as a season finale because then we’d start to be concerned, but we value and respect everybody’s opinion because without it we wouldn’t be here. I sort of keep out of the online stuff. I don’t do any social media. I don’t read reviews, because you can’t just take the good stuff. You have to take the bad stuff as well, and I don’t want to engage in that.

You also made the point to me once that had the people not known about the event from the comic book, that their reaction to that move at the end may have been very different.
At the heart of it is the fact that we dance this tightrope where we have this beautiful environment originated by Robert Kirkman. And then, we’re trying to do our own thing amongst it, but of course there are bits that we honor. We get this wonderful universe that we live in, but people can skip forward to their favorite bits. And I think the sad thing is that if you go forward too quickly you miss out on some really interesting and detailed storytelling in the process.

I know everybody’s excited. I know that there is a very vocal, a very opinionated, fervent fanbase that know the comics and can’t wait to get to certain characters and places. But we’re doing a different thing. Of course it is the same world and we want to honor it, but at the same time I would urge people not to open the presents on Christmas Eve because they’re going to have such a better day amongst all the other peoples and their faces opening it together.

To that end, how often are people asking you who died? Are you constantly getting that question?
Every time I leave my house. Every time I go through customs. Every time they are checking my belt going through the security, everybody’s going, “Please tell me. Just tell me. Just whisper, who is it? Is it you? Why are you in England at the moment? What are you doing here? Why are you not working or filming?” and all of that. It’s hilarious. Absolutely insane. So, part of me just goes, well, it’s people talking for a considerable amount of time. Whether you love it or hate it, it has kept people talking.

[From Entertainment Weekly]

That was excellent and now I see why the cast seems to have such reverence for Lincoln, he sounds so wise. I disagree with the Christmas metaphor though, unless there’s some twist we don’t know about. It’s never a gift to fans to kill off a major character, even if it is a lesser character than we expected from the comics.

Meanwhile there’s a new sneak peak of the upcoming season and you can watch it below. Spoilers which may not mean anything…. Everyone is freaking out about the fact that Dwight is wearing Daryl’s vest, which we already saw in the Comic-Con footage. Of course they’re wonder if that means that Daryl, who doesn’t exist in the comics, was killed by Negan. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case and is probably more of a red herring. It could just be a metaphor for the changing dynamics between the groups, where Negan’s group is dominant down to taking the clothing from the Alexandrians. Executive producer Scott Gimple also issued a statement about the new season. You can read that on Deadline.

Also Popsugar has an interview with Ross Marquand, who plays Aaron. He says, of the upcoming season premiere, that “It’s a rough, rough exit, you know? That being said, I think it’s a great episode, too. I think it’s an episode that people will watch and talk about for years to come, honestly.” Is he saying that a major character died? Like it’s a core character we’ve known from the beginning, not one of the newer people?

Here’s the sneak peek at the new season: