Six seasons into production, it’s obvious that The Walking Dead cast and crew have become one big group of friends.

I had the chance to speak with the team behind AMC’s hit zombie drama during media roundtable sessions at Comic-Con on Friday. The intimate press setting is very different from what you’ll see anywhere else around San Diego this weekend. Instead of screaming fans surrounding the actors, here there is just a simple, quiet room where the press go one-on-one with the stars.

The actors are more relaxed in this setting and it makes it easy to remember that these people are just regular human beings. They talk to one another casually in between their interviews about anything but their zombie drama. They grab their phone and text their friends and family. They stand around and stare absently around the hollow hallways. They’re taking a break from being A-list. They’re human. They’re human!

The friendships between The Walking Dead team members are especially evident when they’re in these types of settings, and it’s clear that the cast and crew are passionate about the show and each other.

Is it impossible to kill beloved characters?

Our first roundtable and my first question was to Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl) and showrunner Scott M. Gimple. With these two together, I couldn’t help but ask if Daryl is simply too popular of a character to ever die.

“I don’t know. Scott?” Reedus asked.

One of the journalists at the table then shared a picture of a kid in Daryl cosplay at Comic-Con this weekend. “Think of what this little child would feel if he died,” she said.

“Look at his little face! Look at his little face,” Gimple said in a cutesy tone. Did that photo just secure Daryl’s life? “We’ll see what we can do for the young man,” the showrunner said.

Not satisfied, I continued to press the question at hand. Daryl’s simply too popular to die, right?

“I really like you,” Reedus said to me with an outstretched hand. “Someone get this guy a drink.”

Gimple then offered a more detailed answer by jumping around the topic — he thinks The Walking Dead isn’t a show about who dies. “Death on TV shows right now — we’ve hit a crazy moment in the culture where like Family Guy was killing Brian, and (spoiler alert) Josh Charles on Good Wife,” he said.

“Killing characters is all over the television set in all different ways, and it isn’t what The Walking Dead is about. They’re in a really rough situation, they are in a world where they’re surrounded by death and it changes them and it tests them and it challenges how they approach it. But we aren’t like ‘the character dies!’ show. We just aren’t. What’s good about that is that’s all over TV now. It’s definitely something that’s going to happen on this show, but we don’t think that our stories are ultimately framed by who died.”

So no matter how cute that little Daryl cosplayer is, Daryl isn’t safe.

Season 6 includes a record-breaking number of walkers

While the cast and crew usually strive to keep future plot lines as secret as possible, they had no problem hyping up the walkers in season 6. In fact, we learned there are way more of the un-dead in this season than any before.

“We’ve been doing a lot more full body [zombie designs], like seeing muscle and bone exposed,” said Nicotero of new designs. “We just keep pushing the boundaries on it.”

This year the show has already created over 2,000 zombies, and they’re only halfway through shooting season 6.

In season 5, there were a total of 967 zombies.

How are they managing to create so many zombies this year even though they only have eight days to shoot each episode? “A lot of my ideas come when I’m sitting in LA traffic, and I’m just sitting there thinking about the show and how to improve,” said Nicotero. “And one of those things was, ‘wow, why don’t we just get a zombie spray tan tent, and just put in zombie color, and just have people walk through and go [spray paint sounds].'”

Thanks to these new tents, the show has been able to produce that record-breaking number of zombies. “One day, the biggest day we had on the first episode [of season 6] was 300 people, and they were all in make-up” he said. “All 300 people. By 9:30 in the morning we had 300 people made up so we could shoot that whole day. We had two other days when there were 180, those were gigantic days.”

“I think we beat last year’s number by the third episode [of season 6].”

The darkest season?

With a gigantic number of zombies assisting the storyline, surely this season is the darkest one yet. Right?

Andrew Lincoln (Rick) doesn’t think so. “I think Terminus was pretty dark — the growth was probably one of the most incredibly…”

“Uhhhhh but yeah, there’s some stuff… there’s some stuff….” Melissa McBride (Carol) interjected slowly about season 6, making sure she was cautious with her words. “There’s some amazing performance stuff. The writing is just through the roof, allowing for some amazing performances coming.”

We asked co-star Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha) in a separate panel what she thought of Lincoln and McBride’s mixed reactions to the question. “I think there’s a journey to darker and darker places because the world is getting darker and darker,” she said. “We have our heroes, but they’re coming across these other people who seem to be better suited for this world now than the world before. And so as we get further on it’s only going to get worse. I think just by nature things get darker as we go.”

The Walking Dead season 6 premieres October 11 on AMC. Watch the trailer here!