The Walking Dead Creator Refuses to Tell Show's Producers How the Story Will End

With The Walking Dead now in its seventh season and an eighth already commissioned, the hit zombie drama won't be ending any time soon. But in terms of how it finishes, there is only one man who has any idea, and he's not telling anyone. Robert Kirkman, who created the comic books on which the show is based, has spoken about his plans for the series.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kirkman revealed that neither executives at AMC nor the show's producers have any input in the direction that the comic book takes, even though it could affect the series. "There's no communication whatsoever [about the ending]," he said. "They have no approval over what happens in the comic. [Showrunner] Scott Gimple is an avid reader of the comic, so he gets the advance issues as they're published, but he doesn't read scripts. He gets mad at me if I give him any kind of indication as to what's coming, because he doesn't like spoilers.

"So, they're kind of a hundred percent in the dark, which I guess is pretty remarkable, and I would probably say it's a testament to the trust that AMC has in me. I mean, I guess to a certain extent, at this point, the comic book is kind of a workshop of future seasons of the show, and it's fun to think that I can just completely torpedo the story if I wanted to."

As Kirkman notes, although the show is not a direct adaptation of the comic, key characters and events are largely taken from the pages of the book. Although the writer has not revealed when he intends to finish the comic, he did tell EW that he knows how it will ultimately conclude.

"I know exactly how it ends, and I'm always taking baby steps toward that point as I'm telling the story," he said. "I know what the end point is, and at the end of the day, I want this entire long narrative to be a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. We're just spending a lot of time in the middle, so, I kind of have to know what that direction is, and I have to know what that end point is to be able to keep building towards it. I think that's the only way to keep it alive."

The Walking Dead season 7 kicked off in October. The season premiere was a violent and controversial episode, that was nevertheless watched by a total of 20.8 million viewers.