The Walking Dead season 9 will play with time, jump ahead

New showrunner for The Walking Dead confirmed what we’ve long suspected about the show’s ninth season: There will be a time jump.

Angela Kang is taking over AMC’s cornerstone program The Walking Dead for season 9, and though she was not able to share details about Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan’s future with the show, she was able to share that there will be a jump in the show’s story.

Kang recently appeared at the “Kick-Ass Women of AMC” panel, where she confirmed that “We’re playing with time in the season, so we get to jump forward in the story.” This isn’t necessarily a surprise for comic book fans, who know that there is a time jump in the comics following the events of All Out War.

Her expression about “playing with time” is interesting after Fear the Walking Dead did something similar in season 4. Fear used different filming techniques to show two different timelines, and the timelines came together in the show’s mid-season finale. Though it was a very stylistic choice that definitely added to the narrative voice of the new season under new showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, some fans were confused by the dueling narratives.

Kang went on to talk about her excitement to do something new with the show, something that she’s excited about. “We’re working on a season that has a really fresh look and feel. We come in on some pretty fun stuff. I’m really focusing a lot on the core character relationships in the show that have kind of been long-lasting, as well as all of our wonderful series regulars.”

Kang, who has been with The Walking Dead since season one, has been through all of the changes and tragic deaths over the years. She’ll always be known as the showrunner who was there when Andrew Lincoln departed the show. Though details remain scarce about what Lincoln’s departure will look like, fans have been on edge about the news since it was revealed in May.

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What do you think about a time jump in The Walking Dead season 9? Are you glad the writers are sticking to canon and using the time jump to move the story forward?