The Walking Dead Extended Season 10 Trailer Is Finally Here
New episodes of The Walking Dead are on the way, and the gang's all here — just not all together.
The show's 11th season was supposed to be its biggest one yet. The finale of season 10 appeared to set up the introduction of the Commonwealth, a huge (in post-apocalyptic terms) community of survivors. Fans of the comic series know that the soldiers who found Eugene (Josh McDermitt) and his small group in that final episode were armed and armored in the same fashion as the Commonwealth's troops from the books. But large numbers of survivors –– and the large numbers of walkers it would take to pose a threat to them –– proved too logistically challenging to shoot in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Production and the premiere of season 11 were delayed.
But, as shows like HBO's Euphoria have already done, The Walking Dead's creative team has put together some bonus episodes to help tide fans over during the delay. They're calling it the "Extended Season 10," six episodes written with a smaller scale in mind, following minimal characters through more personal stories. Thanks to a trailer AMC dropped on January 20, fans are finally getting their first look at how these episodes will play out.
Who will appear in The Walking Dead's Extended Season 10?
The trailer opens with a promise of what's to come, with Eugene, Ezekiel (Khary Payton), Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), and Princess (Paola Lázaro) getting captured by the white-armored troopers while an authoritative voiceover reads off a list of questions that sound like the beginning of an interrogation: "Name. Place of origin. Location during the Fall." According to the loglines AMC has already provided, the story of this quartet and their captors will make up the fourth of the six episodes.
The next face seen in the preview will be more prominent in the extended season. Daryl (Norman Reedus) looks set to appear in at least three of the episodes, including one where he reunites with a returning Maggie (Lauren Cohan), who hasn't forgotten what Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) did to her husband Glenn (Steven Yeun).
Two of the remaining episodes will trace Daryl's relationship with Carol (Melissa McBride), and an event that threatens to split the pair irreparably. According to AMC's synopsis of "Diverged," the fifth of the six new episodes, "Daryl and Carol come to a fork in the road and head their separate ways. Each going into their own type of survival mode, the easiest of challenges become much harder. Will their individual journeys be the tipping point needed to mend their friendship or is the distance between them permanent?" Given the planned spin-off featuring the characters, maybe it's not as difficult of a question as it's meant to seem.
The Walking Dead's Extended Season 10 will introduce Robert Patrick's Mays
Meanwhile, another episode will focus on Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) and Aaron (Ross Marquand) as they make a supply run near Alexandria. We already know from a clip of a table read posted on Twitter that the pair will meet Robert Patrick's new character Mays. It seems unlikely that he's going to invite them to sit down for a friendly chat, judging from the shot in the trailer of Aaron screaming with a revolver against his head and the solemnity with which Gabriel intones, "Evil people aren't the exception to the rule. They are the rule."
Lest fans doubt his wisdom, the trailer also heralds the return of Negan, who Carol removes from the community in an effort to ease the tension his presence (along with, possibly, the return of Maggie) has ratcheted up. "Negan reflects on the events that led him to this point and comes to a conclusion about his future," the description for the sixth and final episode of the extension reads. Whatever he concludes, no doubt it will be a new bridge to lead viewers into the show's 11th season, which is expected to premiere later in 2021.
The first of the season 10 extension's six bonus episodes will premiere on AMC Sunday, February 28. Each episode will also be made available early on the streaming service AMC+.