“You can’t just show up and assume it’s all gonna be roses”
Definitely one thing we explored with the first half of this season is how that happens. How being out there changes people. Even as early as season three, we know that Michonne was a different person when she lived out in the wilderness until she met Andrea. Then they found Woodbury. So that’s definitely a theme that will continue into the second half of this season — who do we become when we’re out here. It’s a really fascinating character study.” If our heroes have indeed found themselves in a safe zone, could everything they’ve endured render them incapable of living in it? Could some serious post- traumatic stress disorder spoil everything?
“That’s a great question. That definitely goes to our story — will people be able to go on with their lives after everything that they’ve experienced? Look at what Rick has been through. Look at what Daryl’s been through. Look at what Carl’s been through. And look at how those events have shaped each of those characters. That’s definitely something we will come across in the second part of the season: who these people have been transformed into by the deeds that they have seen and done. Rick is clearly distrustful. We’ve seen it after episode one in Terminus. When he meets Father Gabriel in episode two, he doesn’t trust him. He has no reason to. In this sort of dog- eat- dog world, you gotta earn people’s trust. You can’t just show up and instantly assume that it’s all gonna be roses. That’s again something that’s very important in terms of our show, that aspect of who they’ve become and how they are able to trust people that they meet on the road.”
no escape
As if to illustrate his point, Nicotero shoots another scene this day. Rick, who’s shed the beard he’s grown these last few years, talks with a young blonde- haired woman in the middle of the empty street. There’s a sense of familiarity and what almost seems like an attraction between the two. But their discussion grows serious, and she shakes her head at him. As Rick walks away, she looks after him, pity in her eyes…
One person who has earned Rick’s trust is Abraham Ford, the widowed US Army sergeant who, until recently, wanted only to reach Washington, DC with his travelling companion Eugene Porter; who’d claimed to possess a means of stopping the zombie apocalypse. But when Eugene confessed he’d been lying, that he had no solution, despair crippled Abraham, though he still managed to