The Walking Dead series finale burning questions answered
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of The Walking Dead.
When it comes to The Walking Dead series finale, we've already examined every single frame and audio cue of that surprise Rick and Michonne return. We also spoke to Chandler Riggs about his secret onscreen cameo, and chatted with Christian Serratos about Rosita's heartbreaking fate.
But we have so many more questions! Big questions like: Why Did Ezekiel end up leading the Commonwealth? Small questions like: Where the heck was Annie? Random questions like: How did Living Colour and Fleetwood Mac make it into the episode for key scenes? We went to showrunner Angela Kang and finale director Greg Nicotero for answers, and they shared the following intel, including plenty of changes from how things were originally going to go.
Jace Downs/AMC Christian Serratos on 'The Walking Dead' series finale
Christian Serratos asked for Rosita to die in the finale.
ANGELA KANG: Christian Serratos volunteered for Rosita to die. When I made my rounds with the actors to talk to them about the final block of episodes, she expressed that she felt like the right thing for her character, and something that would be really good for the finale, was if her character died in trying to save Coco and in trying to make sure that the next generation had a shot in life. And she told me to think about it.
GREG NICOTERO: Christian came to me about six to eight months before we did that episode and said, "I want something really great for Rosita." She's like, "I want that character to go out strong." She said, "I think I might want to die, but if I die, I want to do something heroic. I want to die saving the children." So she came up initially with the idea, and I thought it was a really smart idea for her character.
KANG: We felt that there were some aspects of it that felt like we could pull from the Andrea idea in the comic — just the idea that there was a really important member of the cast doesn't make it, but that there is a chance for there to be a bit of a goodbye that felt like it was honoring the emotional intent of the comic as well as kind of fulfilling something that Christian said that she felt was important for her journey. And we try to take those things into account.
Jace Downs/AMC Christian Serratos and Seth Gilliam on 'The Walking Dead' series finale
NICOTERO: As we got closer to it and then once the outline and then the script came out, she and I worked really, really hard to make sure that we captured the moments that we felt were critical to Rosita's storyline getting wrapped up.
She was 100 percent committed. It was a little different than previous scenarios, because her death had a very resounding meaning in the end of the series. We've had characters go on the show that weren't ready to go. But this was a different situation because she felt that dramatically, story-wise, it left Rosita in a better place than where she would've been if she would've just been part of everybody else just saying goodbye. So I give her a tremendous amount of credit for that. I think that she had fantastic instincts on that.
Luke and Jules totally took one for the team by dying.
KANG: We didn't know right away that we were going to have them die. But as we were working on the story, having a sad death kind of early, it felt like it gave a lot of stakes to everything else that they were doing because Daryl is kind of looking at this death and going, "This could happen to Judith if we're not careful." And for that group of friends around Luke, it kind of hardens their resolve to help the situation so that they can all get out of there. And we love Dan Fogler. We love Alex, who plays Jules. They're great. They die early in the episode, but they do it with such style. So we were appreciative that they came back and sacrificed for the rest of our cast.
Jace Downs/AMC Alex Sgambati on 'The Walking Dead' series finale
Ezekiel may be the new governor of the Commonwealth, but it was almost Mercer. And it was almost Carol. And it was almost Maggie.
KANG: It changed a lot through the season. We talked about maybe Mercer becomes that person. We talked about maybe Carol becomes that person, maybe Maggie becomes that person. And at the end of the day, we settled on Ezekiel because it felt like Ezekiel is inherently a leader, and he has survived so much. And he is a very, very community-focused type of a leader.
The Kingdom was really the most joyful of all the communities. And they were strong, and they were really good at being collaborative with the other communities around them. It felt like Ezekiel kind of went on a journey where he wanted to not do that anymore, but it really felt like he's somebody that at the end of the day is always going to find himself trying to help other people. And that felt like the right kind of leader to go forward.
And I like that Ezekiel and Mercer, who were at such odds when they started, actually kind of wound up working together. But I kind of thought maybe Mercer needs one civilian step before he becomes a full leader. You know what I mean? Because he's been a military guy, so I think he actually probably had to be pushed to even run to be the lieutenant governor. I think he's like, "I don't think that's my path, man. I'm a soldier." And so I think he needed to get his feet wet in the government side as a civilian leader before he does more.
Jace Downs/AMC Michael James Shaw and Khary Payton on 'The Walking Dead' series finale
Carol was originally going to ride off with Daryl at the end.
KANG: The change with Melissa not going into the spin-off happened pretty late in the game. So we'd always planned that the two of them were going to ride off together. In the original version, they would've gone on the bike and pointed west and then would've gotten sidetracked.
And then when we were running the finale, we were like, "Okay, let's reconceive how they end." So it becomes, he rides off, and she's there to support him because there's no anger or anything between them about it. It's just he's going to go off on a mission, and she has a different mission right now.
My co-writers and I, we had a different version of the Daryl-Carol scene on the bench that was a little lighter in some places, but still got to a similar sort of, "I love yous," and things like that. But Norman and Melissa's wish was to just keep it really, really simple and emotional. So I kind of rewrote it accordingly. And I think they did an amazing job with it, so that's kind of how it all came about. It's all part of a collaboration, and we work on it.
Jace Downs/AMC Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus on 'The Walking Dead' series finale
The zombie that Daryl almost runs over with his bike at the very end is none other than Greg Nicotero, making his "14ish" appearance as a walker.
NICOTERO: That was something that was very important to me because in season 1 in the third episode, I was the first walker that Daryl killed on the series. So the first scene with Daryl and a zombie, I was the zombie. So I thought, "Okay, so the last shot, the scene with Daryl, the last walker Daryl sees on The Walking Dead should be me." I wanted to bookend it.
So at lunch, I ran to the makeup trailer. Gino Crognale, my buddy of 40 years, jumped in the chair, and we did the makeup in about 40 minutes. [See photos below.] And then for the rest of the day, I directed in zombie makeup.
Jace Downs/AMC Greg Nicotero on 'The Walking Dead' series finale
Courtesy of Greg Nicotero Zombie Greg Nicotero with Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus on set of 'The Walking Dead' series finale
Courtesy of Greg Nicotero Greg Nicotero on set of 'The Walking Dead' series finale
Negan finally learned to shut his mouth and walk away.
KANG: After that nod to Daryl, he's just focused on the present. And what he knows is, "I got to go home and see my wife. I'm going to go see Annie, and I'm going to leave these people to what they've got to do." And I think the thing that he took from that conversation with Maggie is, "She's extending grace to me and my wife, even though she is literally saying that it pains her to no end every time she sees me." And the way that Negan has grown is by realizing that to walk into that house where they're all having a meal together is actually not kind to Maggie.
The way he's grown is by giving her space. And there's nothing selfish about it. It's not like he's moping about it. He's just like, "The right thing for me to do right now is to walk away and give her the space that she needs." So I think that was really what was behind him going off. Because obviously an alternate version of it would be, he's in there with them, and it's all one happy family. But that didn't feel true to what the two of them had been through this season.
Jace Downs/AMC Jeffrey Dean Morgan on 'The Walking Dead'
Here's why Negan's wife, Annie, wasn't in the finale.
KANG: Annie was back at Alexandria. This was such a tough thing because there was a version where we did see her, but the script was too big, and we couldn't film it all. And there were choices that had to be made for scheduling reasons. And then there were things that shifted because of COVID illnesses, because of Norman's accident, which shifted the filming around. So there were scenes that sometimes had to be cut as a result. So we were going to see Annie again. And we didn't end up seeing her.
Sometimes it's just circumstance, and we can't control it. But we were always going to leave Annie alive because there were a couple of different versions of spin-offs for Negan in play. And so she was a character that was maybe going to continue or maybe not. And so she was going to be in jeopardy, but we always intended for her to be alive.
Josh Stringer/AMC Medina Senghore on 'The Walking Dead'
The zombie smashing a hospital window with a rock was not just a callback to a walker who used one to smash a department store window back in season 1, but was also a callback to Night of the Living Dead.
NICOTERO: Absolutely. That's where the variant scenario came from. I keep trying to remind everybody, they weren't smarter zombies back then, it's just Frank Darabont and I hadn't really figured out the rules yet.
In the first season of Walking Dead, we used Night of the Living Dead as our bible. And in the opening of Night of the Living Dead, when Barbara gets into the car, Bill Hinzman, the zombie, picks up a rock and starts smashing the window of the car. So when we did episode 2 in season 1, when the zombies are outside the department store, that was purely because we still were working on what the rules were.
AMC Season 1 zombies on 'The Walking Dead'
Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" was a last-minute add for the Estate Section fire explosion scene.
KANG: "Cult of Personality" was a last-minute drop-in because the original temp track was a hard rock type of song, but I felt that it didn't work for parts of the sequence. It sort of drowned out some parts and felt a little too similar throughout. We listened to a bazillion different songs that our music supervisor sent. For a while, it was the New Radicals song. Because oddly, the quirkiness of it worked.
We then almost went with something that was a very expensive, very, very, very, very well-known piece of music, but couldn't afford it. But there's something really, really cool about "Cult of Personality." And I think it works for Pamela and her cult of personality.
Sebastian Milton was originally going to live until the finale… and then die.
KANG: Sebastian was originally going to make it all the way into episode 24. There would have been many more shenanigans and f---ed-up things. And at the end of it all, Pamela would've sent him into battle to lead, but it leads to his demise. And she would've purposely put him into a situation where he was going to not make it.
That was a very raw version that we really had worked on very hard, but we ended up pulling it up because it just felt like there needed to be a big turn in that part of the story. And it made so many interesting things for Hornsby and Pamela and things like that. And also, I think AMC was actually like, "What do you think about killing Sebastian earlier?" And we're like, "Maybe." So we worked on the story. Stuff like this happens every season, by the way.
I think Scott might have also been like, "But what if Sebastian dies here?" So there's always when there's a character that is slated to die from the start, like Sebastian was, where it's like, "Do we do it here, or here, or here?" And what branches out from that? And we felt that there was a little more advantage to doing it where we did, rather than saving it for the end, although that would've been fun too.
Jace Downs/AMC Teo Rapp-Olsson as Sebastian Milton on 'The Walking Dead'
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content: