This list contains major (very likely) spoilers for the next eight episodes of The Walking Dead, and spoilers for the comics up to Issue 100.
As a comics reader, part of the fun of watching The Walking Dead is waiting to see which iconic moments, characters and locales are translated into live action.
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Under Scott Gimple, the show has been more faithful than ever to the comics, despite the frequent detours into original material – in fact, we left the show on a cliffhanger that was ripped from the comics as Rick and co attempted to escape the house covered in zombie guts.
From casting announcements and teasing interviews, it’s easy to surmise that adaptations of some major comics storylines are coming up – so with a packed eight episodes to look forward to starting this February, here are five iconic moments from the comics that we could see in the second half of Season 6…
1. ‘Dad?’
This moment comes from Issue 83, at the conclusion of the No Way Out arc. Incidentally, that’s the arc the show is in the midst of adapting – in fact, the cliffhanger of ‘Start to Finish’ was adapted directly from the middle of that issue – so it’s very likely indeed that we might see this in the mid-season premiere.
The moment I’m referring to is a turning point for Carl’s character – in the midst of the zombie horde, Rick’s son catches a stray bullet and gets half his face blown off for his troubles.
Somewhat improbably/miraculously, Carl survives losing half of his head, but it’s nonetheless a seminal moment for the character, who never quite recovers from the experience that gives him temporary amnesia and a far darker outlook on life.
The image of Carl standing there in the moment after he’s shot, weakly calling out for his dad, is still one of the comics’ most powerfully gory four years after it was published and considering the show’s penchant for slightly sadistic gory detail, there’s every chance that we might see this moment in all its disgusting live-action glory when the show returns.
2. Jesus arrives
An unusual heading, I’m aware. It’s probably worth clarifying that this is the entrance of important supporting character Paul ‘Jesus’ Monroe (the nickname is never really explained), rather than… anyone else with that name.
This is from Issue 92, at the start of ‘A Larger World’ arc, and it’s more memorable for its significance for the direction of the comics as a whole than as a moment itself. Jesus plays a broadly similar role to Aaron from the middle of season five – an unknown observer popping up to inform the group of a larger community, in this case the Hilltop Colony.
However, the Hilltop isn’t just another settlement for the group – with Alexandria still going strong after the herd invasion, this new settlement marks the beginning of some pretty aggressive world-building, as a larger world of tangled alliances and conflicts is revealed to the group who begin to learn just how complex this new world has become.
Tom Payne has already been cast and filmed his scenes as Paul Monroe, so we’re certainly getting an adaptation of the character – and it’s very possible that we’ll get a rendition of his ass-kicking arrival where he outsmarts trained fighters Abraham and Michonne without breaking a sweat.
3. A message from Negan
Fast forward three issues, and the team have learned to trust their new acquaintance, who takes them to the Hilltop Colony. In Issue 95, the group reach the Colony, meeting the leader of this huge settlement, Gregory (who turns out to not be a particularly strong leader, but that’s for Season 7).
As soon as they’ve arrived, a Hilltop resident called Ethan arrives with a message from someone called Negan for Gregory… the message being a knife in the gut, because that’s Negan in a nutshell. However, Ethan doesn’t remain a problem for long, with Rick slitting his throat in front of a large crowd before nonchalantly asking them what the problem is.
It’s a great character moment for Rick, underlining his brutality and how much he’s become desensitised to his own violence, and a nicely ominous reminder of the brutal, direct operating methods of Negan, who at this point is merely spoken of in hushed whispers.
As for the chances of seeing it in the second half of Season 6? The role of Gregory has indeed been cast (24’s Xander Berkeley) and the crew have built a Hilltop set in which a handful of episodes were filmed, so there’s a decent chance we’ll see this moment in the latter stages of the spring run.
4. An arrowing death
Another three episodes later, and the comics have moved onto the famous Something to Fear arc.
The conflict between Rick’s group and Negan’s nefarious Saviours has escalated, with Rick’s group having killed a handful of Saviours just before. In this moment, the Saviours began to wreak their revenge, and it wasn’t pretty.
There’s shades of Carl’s death in the moment where Abraham is skewered by a Saviour’s arrow in the midst of a mundane conversation with Eugene – a strong bit of dissonance between the cosy banality of the conversation and the jarring gore of the sight of a guy with an arrow sticking out of his head that lends itself perfectly to TV.
Plus, it’s a death of a major character that really shakes things up, revealing how just about nobody was safe from Negan – which, in retrospect, was a bit of a warning for what would come in the next two issues.
Will we see this moment in the next eight episodes? Possibly – we know that the season goes up to the events of Issue 100 if it adapts the comics’ basic structure, based on the fact that Negan is appearing, so this moment falls within what the second half of the season will cover.
It’s likely, if we do see the arrow death, that the show will ‘remix’ the moment, having a slightly more minor character die in place of Abraham, whose fan favourite status would make a death this abrupt a little controversial.
5. Lucille
With almost 150 issues, it’s hard to say exactly which is the most popular moment from the comics – but a pretty good guess would be the introduction of the new villain, Negan, which took place in the infamous Issue 100.
And with Jeffrey Dean Morgan confirmed to appear in the season finale as Negan, it’d be very surprising indeed if the show passed up the opportunity to translate this moment into live action.
I’ve used the word ‘brutal’ a few times this article, but Negan’s introduction, in which he corners the group with the aid of his Saviours, sadistically picks out Glenn and beats his brains out with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire in front of his friends, is probably the most gory the comics has ever gotten, with the disgusting imagery heightened by the fact that this brutal death was given over to one of the most prominent characters in the vast ensemble.
It’s pretty much a note perfect introduction to Negan, introducing his sadistic brutality and strangely childlike personality alongside underlining the threat he imposes, and it’d be very surprising indeed if this wasn’t made a central, perhaps even the final, scene of the season finale.
Online speculation has once again suggested that the death might be remixed, with someone other than Glenn (such as Daryl or Morgan) getting ‘Lucilled’ – but considering the saga of Glenn’s faked death in recent episodes and how that’s seemingly given him a period of immunity, the best choice for the death might just be a direct translation of the comics.
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What do you want to see in Season 6 Part 2? Let us know below…