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Warning! This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Seasons 7 and 8.

The Walking Dead has been on quite the journey of highs and lows over the years, with an especially notorious low being Seasons 7 and 8. Not only was the show riddled with story and pacing problems, but that’s also about when its ratings took a serious nosedive. While things haven’t quite recovered to the point of bringing the AMC series back to its glory days, there has been a marked improvement in the quality of the content, which might very well be a direct result of Angela Kang taking over as showrunner.

That’s certainly the sense I got from Greg Nicotero during an upcoming episode of The Witching Hour, and who better to judge the state of production on The Walking Dead than someone who’s worked on the show in a multitude of capacities since day one? Nicotero’s appearance on The Witching Hour was tied to the June 2nd release of Creepshow Season 1 on DVD and DVD/Blu-Ray Steelbook - which I highly recommend checking out. But, when you’ve got a body of work like Nicotero’s, we just had to cover a little bit of everything on the show, especially when he was sitting right in the middle of his studio which was packed with some of the most iconic props and molds imaginable. 

In addition to talking Creepshow, Scream, Army of Darkness, Day of the Dead and so much more, Nicotero also took a moment to address the Walking Dead rollercoaster ride he’s been on. When asked about how he managed the show’s high highs and low lows, Nicotero immediately referenced one of the most unforgeable moments of the series:

“Listen, to be really honest, you know, the Glenn and Abraham episode, it was rough. I mean, it was rough emotionally for me because I remember reading the comic book and seeing Glenn killed in the comic book, and I was really disturbed by how senseless it felt in the comic book. Like, the guy just says, ‘Eenie, meenie, minie, moe,’ and then he was gone. And it really bothered me so when that moment came up in the show and I was really tight with Michael Cudlitz and really tight with Steven Yeun, and I knew that that was gonna land on my shoulders to direct that episode, I went in and I directed the best episode that I could direct knowing that I was breaking people’s hearts, and really sort of walking right on that line, but part of what the show really is about in this iteration of the show, it really is about that senseless one minute they’re there, the next minute they can be gone. So it’s hard because I read a lot of great stuff about it and I read a lot of terrible stuff about it, and I would say there are times when I agree with some of the things that are said and we’ve had those conversations. There were things that came up, we had a conversation, I said, ‘Mark my words, someone’s gonna publish an article about that,’ and then the episode airs, and there’s an article and it’s right there. And it’s a little frustrating sometimes.”

As we all well know, making movies and shows is a collaborative process and all of the creatives involved are not always going to see eye to eye on certain matters. Nicotero did run into that type of challenge a number of times on Walking Dead and offered up these two specific examples:

“But in other instances, there have been things that I vehemently disagreed with. You know, like in the original comic book when Shane dies in Season 2, Carl’s the one who shoots Shane and when we did the TV show, I remember it wasn’t Carl that shot Shane and I remember having a conversation with Robert Kirkman and saying, ‘Dude, I remember that moment that it was Carl, this little kid who had the gun who ended up shooting Shane.’ So there have been times when I kind of pushed back against some things and a lot of times, yeah, it works great and other times, it’s like - you know, like when Rick cut Negan’s throat, I directed that episode and I had said to Scott Gimple, the showrunner, ‘I think Maggie should shoot him. I think Maggie should either kill Negan or shoot Negan or do something because she’s right there.’ I said it’s really a hard moment to shoot knowing that Maggie collapses to her knees because Rick spares Negan’s life. And I sort of had pitched this idea to Gimple; I’m like, ‘Why doesn’t Maggie shoot him? Why doesn’t Maggie kill him?’ And, you know, obviously Negan’s character had more of a journey and there was a lot more going on.” 

Nicotero added one more example that raised some serious eyebrows when the episode aired:

"But, you know, the episode where Rick shows up in front of The Sanctuary with all the cars and they’re all shooting and nobody shot anybody? I kept saying, ‘Can Negan get shot in the leg? Can he get shot in the arm?’ You have 100 people there and none of them actually shot anybody! Even Jeffery [Dean Morgan] was like, ‘Come on, man! Give me a bullet hole in the shoulder or in the leg or something!’ And I’m like, ‘I would love to shoot you.’ Andy [Lincoln] was like, ‘Can I just shoot him?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah! We should! He should get shot!’ And when we were shooting that episode, I went, ‘I know I’m gonna hear about it. I’m gonna hear that they had an army of like 100 people outside The Sanctuary; not one of them actually hit anybody.’ And we did.”

But again, The Walking Dead turned a corner with Season 9 and even though there were some serious bumps in the road to get there, Nicotero knows they’ve now got a promising team at the helm:

"But listen, the good news is - the great news is, the show’s really in a great place. I think Angela [Kang]’s done an unbelievable job and I think that with Samantha [Morton] and Ryan [Hurst] and all of the actors, with Jeffrey and Melissa [McBride] and Norman [Reedus] and LC and everybody, the last two seasons have been really, really fun and the storytelling has just become adrenalized. We don’t take a long time to sort of get to it. The stories really, really move, and I think Angela’s don e a great job."

If you opted out of The Walking Dead after Season 8 and are thinking about jumping back in, now might be the right time. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, AMC is delaying the release of the Season 10 finale so you've got time to catch up. The penultimate episode of the season did air on April 5th as planned, but the final episode is being held until they can complete post-production. Once that happens, it'll be released as a “special episode” later this year.

If you'd like to hear more from Nicotero, keep an eye out for his full episode of The Witching Hour dropping on Friday, May 29th!