The Ones Who Live’s Zombies Are Intentionally Disgusting

The Big Picture

• The Walking Dead franchise continues to keep the walkers fresh, with new variations that gross out viewers on the AMC series.
• Walkers are now used as an energy source in the latest spin-off, fueling electricity in a morbid yet creative storyline.
• The team behind The Walking Dead constantly pushes boundaries to keep audiences engaged and grossed out with innovative walker twists.

Despite running for 11 seasons and being the jumping-off point for a multitude of off-shoots, if there’s one thing the creative department behind The Walking Dead franchise has been able to do, it’s keep the walkers fresh. Sure, on a base level, they’re just a bunch of zombies thirsting for brains, but given the sheer number of years the undead have been shuffling across TV screens, the folks behind the magic continue to find new ways to gross out audiences time and time again. The most recent spin-off to hit fans is the Danai Gurira and Andrew Lincoln-led project, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and the walkers are more queas-inducing than ever. During an interview with Collider’s Christina Radish, the co-stars opened up about the many variations that fans have already seen and have yet to see as the AMC series continues to chug through its first season.

Already a huge success after just a few episodes, Radish noted that the zombies in The Ones Who Live have really upped the ante on the disgust level, giving viewers something they’ve – somehow – never seen before in the franchise’s history. To that, Gurira responded, “As you should be. When you’re used to it, like us, it’s strange.” Adding some background to how the walkers in the show’s premiere episode came to be and how others would look down the line, Lincoln said,

“When we did the opening sequence in episode one,
we had the glowing ones, the flaming ones, that had sparks
, the work KNB,
Greg Nicotero
’s company, did was amazing. The combination of the practical and the visual effects was amazing. It’s just improved and improved in the universe. In episode five, there are very specific walkers that, because of the environment and where they are, have a bit of comedic value. They try to put flavors in it. That’s

Scott Gimple

and Greg Nicotero.”

After Gurira referenced episode two’s “weird gas man thing,” Lincoln continued,

“I loved that. I thought it was such a funny gag. The exploding head that knocks you out,
I love that weird, heightened humor
. They’re always trying to push the boundaries of what hasn’t been done. It happens in the writers’ room as well, with all these guys who are showrunners in their own franchise in the world.
They’re brilliant. Their brains are so smart.
They’ve got an encyclopedic reference point and they go, “Okay, what about this?,” but it’s always about pushing the characters.”

Walkers As An Energy Source

As we learned in previous titles like The Walking Dead: Dead City, walkers are the way of the future as they can be broken down and tapped into as a source of energy. This was one of many genius storylines that Lincoln was pointing to during his praise of the project’s writers. Continuing with his sentiment, Lincoln added, “The whole thing with the walkers is about energy. It’s the new energy source that they’re using. They kill them, dry them out, and then burn them, and that’s how they’re fueling the electricity.”

If you thought the renewable energy plot point was a bit morbid, Gurira says it’s simply about survival and that it goes hand in hand with what the team behind The Walking Dead has been doing for well over a decade.

“That is what the world has to do. That’s the premise. You have to find new ways for people to figure out how to survive and new ways that things can go wrong with the walkers, even when a walker is already a walker.
That’s how the ball is kept in the air
. You constantly have to keep people going, “Okay,
I’ve never seen that before and that grossed me out more than anything I’ve ever seen
.” That’s how we have to keep the ball in the air. When that happens, we’re winning.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live air on Sunday nights on AMC with streaming available on AMC+.

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