‘The Walking Dead’: Michael Cudlitz Says Season Finale Will ‘Piss Off’ Fans
For weeks, Walking Dead fans have been told to have their tissues ready for The Walking Dead season finale, but Michael Cudlitz told Yahoo! TV to prepare yourself for another strong emotion March 29, because the episode titled “Conquer” is going to get your blood boiling.
“It’s going to piss you off. There will be tears, but also, once again, like the writers have been doing pretty consistently, it tees up a new beginning in a very, very different way.”
Cudlitz, who plays Abraham on The Walking Dead, wouldn’t elaborate further on exactly what will make fans angry, but they are already seething about Father Gabriel’s (Seth Gilliam) betrayal last week on The Walking Dead. Cudlitz isn’t so sure that anger is entirely justified, however.
“[Father Gabriel’s] not lying. He may be wrong, but he’s certainly not lying as to what’s happening. He’s saying, ‘You brought these people in, and they’re taking over.’ Then you see [Abraham], and he’s taken over the whole construction crew. Rick is talking to Carol, and she’s like, ‘You’re going to have to kill him,’ about Pete. Glenn is with [Deanna’s] son when he’s taken out… You realize at some point, you have to question. You go, ‘Wait, are we rooting for the bad guy?’ If our team was to come across their team, we’d kill them all. I don’t trust them. They’re dangerous. They have an agenda. It’s like, ‘Yeah, you’d be right, but because we know them, and we care about them.'”
Cudlitz did concede that Gabriel’s guilt on The Walking Dead could be motivating him to get rid of the witnesses to his shortcomings, which makes him evil, as well as locking people out and leaving them for the walkers prior to joining Rick’s group. For those reasons, Cudlitz said he thinks Father Gabriel is the weakest person on The Walking Dead, even more so than the pampered Alexandrians.
Cudlitz, who is one of the newer cast members this season on The Walking Dead, seems to have fit right in with his TV band of brothers and sisters. Likewise, Walking Dead fans have taken to the fire-haired muscle man of the survivors’ group, notorious for some killer lines he drops out of the blue. Most notably, Abraham created a whole new curse word last episode when he uttered “Motherd*ck!”
But some fans have noted that Abraham is more than “dolphin smooth” or “The world’s going to need Rick Grimes.” He had one Walking Dead fan ask to inscribe a photo with “And the dead will die, and the living will have this world again.”
“Abraham just talks in this wonderfully poetic way that is so dark blue collar and weird and strangely prophetic. I think it really separates him. He’s such a character with everything, with the mustache and the red hair and the way he walks and the way he talks to people and the way he enters the room. There’s no filter.”
If Walking Dead fans are wondering if any of those classic lines were improvised, Cudlitz gives all the credit to the writers.
“No, those are all wonderfully written by the writers. We’ve played around with stuff. I’ve given suggestions over time with certain things, but all those iconic ones, they are all specifically scripted. There’s more coming. I like to say there’s some really wonderfully complicated ones coming.”
The season finale has been expanded to 90 minutes, and the writers for The Walking Dead had their work cut out for them to find a season ending to up the ante from all the tension and deaths this season. They started Season 5 of The Walking Dead with Rick’s group about to be bludgeoned by a baseball bad and thrown on the grill, then went through the deaths of Beth (Emily Kinney), Tyreese (Chad Coleman), and the gruesome death of Tyler James Williams last week. Cudlitz says fans may have missed a lot of great moments in the action without the expansion.
Rumored character deaths range from Daryl (Norman Reedus) to Rick (Andrew Lincoln), the central character, as creator Robert Kirkman has said many times no characters are off limits. Who do you think will die in the finale?
[Photo by Ben Leuner/AMC]
