The Walking Dead Season 9 Will Remix Key Comic Storylines

There are a lot of juicy storylines from The Walking Dead comics that fans are eager to see play out during Season 9. The Whisperers, prison Negan, and the time jump are among some of the favorite plotlines fans have waited to see for years. They’re not alone – The Walking Dead’s new showrunner Angela Kang, who has been with the show since Season 2 as a writer and producer, is also looking forward to adapting the source material.

“I love the comics,” Kang recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “I legitimately read every issue of the comic before I knew a job possibility existed on The Walking Dead. For us, we’ve always taken incredible inspiration from the comics just as fans, but also as people creating the TV world of The Walking Dead.”

As thrilling as it will be to the see more comic beats come to life, nearly every post-All Out War story arc will be tweaked on the show. For example – Carl, who was killed off on the show last season, played a huge role in the Whisperer arc and prison Negan storylines. Other changes between the mediums include Daryl (who’s not in the comics), Carol and Judith (who both died in the comics back at the Prison), and Oceanside (which is almost completely different from the comics).

Angela Kang told THR, “I do love writing for these characters that have had different journeys than the comic book characters, or exist or don’t exist from the books, so that’s one of the really fun aspects of the storytelling of this. We’ve never been completely tethered to the events of the comic. We obviously want to tell the stories that we ourselves are so excited about, and look forward to, but we always hope to mix in what’s the show’s reality because it’s so rich in another direction at this point.”

“We’ve always had to remix things, and I think that’s one of the things that keeps the show exciting and fresh,” Kang said. “…and (Robert) Kirkman himself has always been, ‘Yeah, go ahead, change that up! I wrote that 10 years ago, I would have done that much better now.’ He has such a great attitude about it.” So which comic storylines CAN we expect to see in Season 9? “We’ve gotten to do so many cool moments. There’s definitely a favorite moment that will probably happen in the future, but I don’t want to talk about it! It’s fun to read the comics and go, ‘Holy shit, that’s so cool! How are we going to do that? That can’t be done.’ And then figuring out how we actually make it happen. That’s part of the really fun process of working on this show.”

Check out the rest of the interview over at The Hollywood Reporter. The Walking Dead San Diego Comic Con panel will take place Friday, July 20th at Hall H, where more information about the season, including a trailer, is expected. Season 9 will premiere later this October on AMC and its international networks.