AMC The Walking Dead social media accounts recently posted a video captioned "Meet the Walker King." (see below) If viewers watched the fourth spinoff, The Walking Dead: Dead City, they knew exactly what this was referring to, but those who didn't have a clue about what this creature was.
Written by Brenna Kouf and directed by Gandja Monteiro, the Dead City episode, "Stories We Tell Ourselves," saw Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Ginny (Mahina Napoleon), and their group descend into the corpse-laden sewers of Manhattan to escape from The Croat (Željko Ivanek) and his crew. They discover that the Croat stores the corpses he uses in his methane productions in the sewers, which creates a type of hot-boxing that converts the corpses into methane used for fuel.
After being betrayed by members of her group, Maggie & Ginny continue with Maggie's vision blurred by the methane exposure. When Maggie gets stuck, she tells Ginny to continue on, and a walker begins to emerge from the pile of bodies. To Maggie's and viewers, shock, the monster that rises is a fusion of four walkers, with multiple heads and limbs coming at her. Surprisingly, she made quick work of the beast, and as the fourth part rises, she also kills that one.
The question arose about what this mutant walker, or Walker King, could be, and it was clarified by showrunner Eli Jorné. He stated that the mass of bodies was the work of the Croat, who, before the outbreak, was a scientist. He discovered a way to use the accumulation of dead bodies to convert into fuel, and this mutant formed in the depths of the sewers.
"What if a walker kind of stepped through one walker, and then another walker stuck its head through that walker, and they got all, like, tangled that way, and they had to start to kind of move together?"
- Eli Jorné - Dead City showrunner
Before encountering the Walker King, Maggie's group came upon a pile of goo. This was fat from bodies that, over time, melded into a glob and had broken down so far to render them immobile. The Walker King is the beginning of another pile that would eventually break into the goo, but the creature could still rise and attack since the brains were still intact.
The Walker King was brought to life by the amazing SFX crew of Dead City, who created something exciting and new in TWDU.
The Walking Dead: Dead City will return to AMC and AMC+ with its second season in 2025.
