With the end of the second season breaking a lot of records, there’s a lot of pressure that will be coming with the third season. Even worse is that they set up a lot of pressure for themselves with what comes at the end of the final episode of the second season, with a character introduction and a locale change that’s certainly going to be enticing for fans of the books but also challenging to produce while avoiding some of what caused such a riff amongst some viewers with the second season. The folks at Movieweb were involved with a conference call with Glen Mazzara who took over as showrunner midway through this season from Frank Darabont (and has been involved prior to that as well) and he covered a lot of ground. Spoilerific ground, so if you’re not inclined to know, it’s time to move on.
With a new character showing up at the end of season 2 on top of several others introduced, fans know there are more coming in season 3 as well as a potential returnee from season 1:
“I think the Tyrese character is someone we are interested in introducing at some point,” said Mazzara. “We still have Morgan and Dwayne, who are out there from the pilot. We are interested in them. There are new characters that will be original to the series. Not coming straight from the comic book.”
When it comes to the locale change, Mazzara has some good things to say about it and there’s definitely room for much more exploration and resource scavenging ahead:
“Right now, I do see the prison storyline lasting through both season three and four,” he said. “I do think that is a major storyline. I know we were on the farm, perhaps, longer than people wanted. There were reasons for that. What we want is for that prison to not feel claustrophobic. I think the farm played a little claustrophobic for some people. Now that the entire landscape has fallen victim to the zombie apocalypse, zombies are literally at the gates of this prison. That prison is a very small safe corner. There is a lot of danger around. It won’t feel like we are bottled up, the way we were on the farm.”
As for some of the bigger things coming down the road, it’s a push that shows the larger world of survivors and how people are dealing with the new world order:
“I do think that prison is a significant storyline, but we are also interested in opening up this world. The Governor has the world of Woodbury. There are other factors out there, other groups. I do think that Rick’s group is stumbling into a much larger world.”
