Tell me though how you came up with telling these flashback stories and the framework to begin and end with those to show how the people of Terminus got that way. What was the impetus or inspiration for doing that? Is it sort of an extension of what you did with the Governor’s catch-up episodes last season?
I think that’s a good way to think about it. When I sit down with the writers to approach these stories, we want to know the whole story. And there are histories, and all sorts of other stories going on the show that we never really get to, that we know what went on, but because they’re not part of the main story, we don’t tell them.
I knew the story of Terminus and what happened there as our characters last year were on their way there. And I went back and forth with actually telling that story, but ultimately the story of Terminus, which I believe we’re able to do fairly economically in this episode, could very well be an echo of what happens moving forward to Rick and his crew. That there’s something about this world that if still alive, you’ve got to have some sort of story. It isn’t like nothing happened to you. If you’re still alive, some amazing things happened to you. Everybody walking around the planet on The Walking Dead in that timeline has an amazing story. And, to that end, they’re kind of like walking ghosts of Christmas Future and ghosts of Christmas Past to our characters. And I think the story of Terminus works that way with our characters this upcoming season.
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You spent months and months teasing this season premiere, telling us, “Hey, we’re going to get a lot of answers,” and we certainly did. But now that’s done, Scott, so now the next question is what can you tell us about the next episode we’re going to see on Sunday?
Oh, wow we’re into that now.
That’s how quick it happens, man.
I will say that there are some massively disgusting things that happen. You know how I was saying it’s complicated between Rick and Carol? Some of that is explored. A lot of business between these characters is explored. We might meet a new character, and I’m going to go back to super disgusting. I mean, super disgusting stuff.