We know Rick Grimes, and while he’s always a developing character, we feel pretty comfortable with him. However, this season of The Walking Dead introduces us to life outside of the Ricktatorship.
Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman does a great job of imagining other parts of his zombie apocalypse world in the wildly popular comic series. According to Kirkman in an interview with MTV, we’ll now be seeing that larger scope in the AMC television series as well.
“For the first two seasons, this has been Rick’s show. We’ve known that cast.”
We’ve been through a lot with them, but now we see there are other people out there in the world. Enter the Governor and his little utopia of Woodbury. Granted, we still have a few familiar faces – Andrea and Merle – but overall, this is a new experience for viewers.
“We’re adding a lot of new elements into the show this season, and we’ve been very careful to parse them out in a way that isn’t too jarring.”
The first two episodes of season 3 mainly focused on Rick and the group at the prison. Kirkman and the show’s crew planned this to help fans get readjusted to the current state of the world.
“We definitely wanted to get back into the Walking Dead show we know and love before we started into the crazy evolution of this new Walking Dead that people are going to be blown away by.”
After Sunday’s episode focused entirely on Woodbury, we can see that evolution starting to take shape.
Kirkman also shares his thoughts on the closeness that Michonne and Andrea have developed over the winter months. Even though we saw a little tension between the two in “Walk with Me,” we know that they care deeply for each other and will work hard to protect the other.
“I think if you sit down and do the math, one thing that’s interesting is that Andrea’s time with Rick and the group is actually a shorter amount of time than her time with Michonne. While we may not have seen a lot of that stuff, they’ve grown a much stronger bond than Andrea might have grown with even Dale. We’ll see a lot more of that moving forward.”
Andrea also seems to be getting a little cozy with the Governor, while Michonne is untrusting and worries for Andrea’s safety. Michonne won’t let her friend get too involved with anything dangerous though.
“[Andrea]’s got Michonne looking out for her. I think anyone’s got good odds if they have her on their side.”
We would trust Michonne over the Governor in a heartbeat.