What the New Writer's Room Says About Dead City Season 3 (TD)
Thanks to @obidala2 ❤️ by way of @twdmusicboxmystery for updated info on the new Dead City Writer's Room. This information is now available publicly, a list of writers for DC season 3 episodes, including *hidden* episode 3.7 and 3.8, for which no filmed spoilers have been revealed:
3.01 - Seth Hoffman
3.02 - Matthew Negrete
3.03 - Mira Barnum
3.04 - Matthew Negrete and Jacey Heldrich
3.05 - Justin Boyd
3.06 - Jacey Heldrich
3.07 - Seth Hoffman
3.08 - Mira Barnum and Justin Boyd
For this post, I'm going to focus mainly on Seth Hoffman and Matthew Negrete. Per the other writers, Barnum and Heldrich are both entirely new to TWD, while Boyd has four writing credits for Fear seasons 7-8. Note that the new showrunner for Dead City season 3 is SETH HOFFMAN. Let me talk about why the inclusion of Seth Hoffman and Matthew Negrete are very interesting for us in TD:
Seth Hoffman wrote exclusively for The Walking Dead during seasons 4-6. He hasn't worked on any TWD projects since. In fact, he has only one industry credential at all listed on IMDB since 2016: an Amazon show called Tell Me Your Secrets, for which he served as a "Consulting Producer." Prior to his time at TWD, Hoffman mostly worked on Prison Break. He wrote five episodes of House, M.D., one episode of Gimple's FlashForward, and he also collaborated with Gimple on the script for the film Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Despite his limited career landscape, Hoffman seems to be in Gimple's professional inner circle, even beyond TWD. Here's a list of the TWD episodes with a writing credit for Seth Hoffman:
4.08 “Too Far Gone”
4.11 “Claimed” (w/ Nichole Beattie)
4.15 “Us” (w/ Nichole Beattie)
5.05 “Self-Help” (w/ Heather Bellson)
5.07 “Crossed”
5.11 “The Distance”
5.16 “Conquer” (w/ Scott Gimple)
6.02 “JSS”
6.09 “No Way Out”
6.12 “Not tomorrow Yet”
My analysis: These are all clear destabilizer episodes. We see total destabilization of the prison and family unit in "Too Far Gone." "Claimed" and "Us" both feature the Claimers as a massive destabilizing force for both Rick's arc and Daryl's arc in 4b, leading to the breakdown of morality norms in Gimple's "A." "Self-Help" reveals Eugene's secret, destabilizing the core B-team lead by Abraham and removing their cause for D.C.. "Crossed" examines destabilization on the institutional level at Grady as Dawn, in danger of mutiny, frets over the loss of Noah, Beth and Edwards collude behind her back, and Team Family takes several of her officers hostage. In "The Distance," we see Aaron as a massive destabilizer, albeit in a positive sense, as he throws a wrench into Rick's leadership and offers a way out of Team Family's currently unsustainable circumstances, leaving them off at the ASZ. "Conquer" sees the death of Reg and Pete and Rick's mental collapse, the full destabilization of not just the community, but also Rick's psyche itself. "JSS" sees the Wolves as a major destabilizing factor for the illusion of safety at the ASZ and "No Way Out" as the culmination of events set into motion by "Start to Finish": the Wolf in captivity, Carol vs. Morgan, Deanna's death, and the death of Jesse and her entire family after Carl is shot in the head. The entirety of the ASZ is destabilized after 6.9 and will never be the same.
Remember, too, that a key narrative purpose for seasons 4-5 specifically is destabilization: to destabilize the narrative, destabilize the group, destabilize the timeline, destabilize the audience, throw us off balance, so that many don't notice the bait and switch with Beth's "funeral" and the fact that her death doesn't make physical sense. Gimple does this so that he can "soft" kill her without having to answer too many questions, and then bring her back later when he has the freedom to do so. Do I think Gimple may be about to pull some insane shit like this again? Yes, I do.
Do I think it's a coincidence that a guy who hasn't really worked in the industry at all in ten years, but who has a history of working with Scott Gimple, and who worked on TWD exclusively from seasons 4-6, the exact seasons in which Gimple sets into motion his grand thesis, is now being brought back out of nowhere to be showrunner on Dead City season 3, the same season where we will presumably see Beth again in a dream sequence? No, I don't.
It's also worth mentioning that Hoffman's "Too Far Gone" is a seminal episode for the Gimple thesis. It's the episode in which we see the splintering of Team Family into what I like to refer to as "family units." (I've written about my theory on "family units" in "Too Far Gone" here). One of these family units, as arranged by Gimple specifically, was Beth and Daryl.
Let's move onto Matthew Negrete. I'm not going to list all of Negrete's writing credits here, because it would take up too much space. He has worked extensively inside TWDU, including as showrunner for World Beyond. He wrote for TWD from seasons 4-9, aka the entirety of Gimple's reign as showrunner. But to keep things brief, here are Matthew Negrete's writing credits for TWD seasons 4-6:
4.04 - “Indifference”
4.10 - “Inmates” (w/ Channing Powell)
5.04 - “Slabtown” (w/ Channing Powell)
5.06 - “Consumed” (w/ Corey Reed)
5.14 - “Spend”
6.01 - “First Time Again” (w/ Scott Gimple)
6.08 - “Start to Finish”
6.11 - “Knots Untie” (w/ Channing Powell)
6.14 - “Twice as Far”
6.16 - “Last Day on Earth” (w/ Scott Gimple)
My analysis: Negrete is definitely Gimple's "main guy." His episodes also tend to be concerned with worldbuilding. Many of them take us to new locations and new landscapes, introduce us to new characters. They set ground rules, take us through new systems of governance (ie: Negan, Gregory, Dawn) and expand our understanding of Gimple's world on a global scale. See:
"Indifference" takes place entirely outside of the prison, taking us through the liminal suburban landscape with Rick and Carol and the veterinary college in Macon with Daryl and Michonne. "Inmates" sets the tone of refraction for the entirety of Team Family, showing multiple groups in multiple new locations outside the prison, establishing the setting as chimeric, yet another liminal space traversable by train tracks alone. "Slabtown" is his crown jewel. He takes us into Grady Memorial, introducing an entirely new system for TWD, setting longterm ground rules for the CRM, and finally revealing what happened to Beth after "Alone." In "Consumed," Daryl and Carol visit a post-apocalyptic Atlanta hellscape, navigating new settings and hopping from building to building like something right out of a video game. Further, a flashback takes us, once again, outside of the known world and into Carol's brief experience in exile.
"Spend" follows a group from the cushy ASZ setting off on a supply run, outside the known world for many, resulting in the gruesome death of Noah, dissolving the final vestige of the Grady plot. Then, we see Negrete, along with Gimple on BOTH counts, writing the first and last installments of 6a, aka: the beginning and end of Operation Lead the Walkers Away, which @twdmusicboxmystery has talked about extensively as a probable blueprint for what happened during the Missing 17 Days. "Knots Untie" takes us to Hilltop for the very first time, expanding the world as Team Family knows it, and "Twice As Far," a Daryl-centric episode, once again taking us outside the known world on a supply run, resulting in Denise's death, or the death of yet another Beth proxy, as well as the full reintroduction of Dwight. Finally, "Last Day on Earth" is the ultimate masterclass in TWDU worldbuilding as our very first introduction to Negan and the Saviors.
Negrete's knack for worldbuilding, which involves setting tone and atmosphere for newly revealed information and creating a palpable sense of "bigness" in a layered setting is likely what prompted Gimple to set him up as showrunner for World Beyond. Negrete is also credited as a Consulting Producer for The Ones Who Live, with two writing credits: 1.03 "Bye" and 1.05 "Become." These two items prompted both me and @wdway to simultaneously (and independently) determine that he is likely fully-versed in Gimple's CRM-lore. He's a CRM specialist. He probably wrote some of it himself.
Does this mean that Dead City is headed for CRM territory? Not necessarily. I have no idea. But based on what I see, it seems like, regardless, we're going to find ourselves in some sort of destabilized, train wreck narrative and then tossed into a setting or system that we don't yet fully understand. Think about the tornado that rips through Dorothy's farm, picks up her house, and drops her in the Land of Oz. Think about Beth being abducted off the street amidst a walker inundation and dropped square into the Grady experiment. Think about the Governor rolling into the happy prison setting, on the heels of the Prison Flu, and chopping the head off the patriarch, setting the entire narrative on fire. That's the kind of thing we may be headed for. It's sort of like a reset. It's the same thing that happened after 2.13, then after 4.08, and then again after 5.01, and again after 5.09. A period of wandering and group fragmentation, followed by discovery and cohesion, followed by destabilizing forces, and then followed by war and narrative implosion once again. It's just the d.c. al coda, on repeat.
On a related note, Negrete has written several key episodes for Beth's arc as well as episodes in which Beth's arc, past or present, intersects with or impacts Daryl's, including "Inmates," "Slabtown," "Consumed," and "Twice as Far." The fact, too, that Negrete wrote both "Indifference" as well as its unofficial sequel "Consumed," ie: the episode in which Carol is exiled from Rick's story, and then the episode where she is pitched headlong into Beth's, communicates that Negrete is also heavily instrumental in Carol's characterization and her role as a sort of wandering "free radical" character, someone who has no definitive anchor to any one setting or timeline in particular. She can go wherever she wants, ie: wherever Gimple needs her most, that's where Carol will be. But regardless of where she ends up, Carol is always inextricably linked to DARYL and this includes her specific entanglement in his separation from Beth. For example, many TDers think that Carol may still have some knowledge about what happened at Grady, but that she has either repressed the memories or withholds them for reasons unknown.
As usual, remember that this is informed speculation and just my analysis of the information we have. It's not meant to be predictive of truth. It's just extremely interesting to me that Gimple fully gutted the writer's room for Dead City season 3 and then repopulated it with his own guys, his inner circle, suggesting a return but also an expansion, likely of TWDU per Gimple's solitary vision, which is something that, if you ask me, comes to a head in season 5, one of the most zany, off-the-wall seasons of TV ever produced (imho).
Powell and Kang: It's also worth noting that the two other most involved writers for Beth's arc and that transitional space between seasons 4-6 re: Gimple's "inner circle" are Channing Powell and Angela Kang. Kang is obviously responsible for both "Still" and "Coda," the beginning and the *end* of bethyl, while Powell collaborated with Negrete numerous times, including on both "Inmates" and "Slabtown." She is further responsible for Daryl-centric episodes like "East," "Hearts Still Beating" (collab with Negrete), "New Best friend," and "Monsters" (collab with Negrete). Powell was also the showrunner for Tales of the Walking Dead, or what I like to think of as a kind of instruction manual for how to read Gimple's TWDU. She specifically wrote Tales 1.05 "Davon," which is heavily predictive of events in Daryl Dixon. Now, while neither Kang nor Powell are currently involved in TWDU, Powell was involved as a producer on TOWL and Kang, who was originally the showrunner for Daryl Dixon, remained as an executive producer on the show. Neither seems to have any major, active projects at the moment and will presumably continue to serve as producers on Gimple's projects going forward.
Now, to quote @wdway: "Gimple surrounds himself with writers of the same mindset." To this, I'll add: Gimple has been consistently using his original inner circle, which took shape in seasons 4-6, to build out and execute his grand scheme, or larger architecture for TWDU: Kang as his direct heir to run the flagship, Negrete to run World Beyond, Powell to run Tales, and now Hoffman to run Dead City.
I really think that bringing in Hoffman implies a change of direction for the entire franchise. The original showrunner Eli Jorne, a lot like David Zabel, was an outsider who helped establish a unique vision for the spinoff. Now, bringing in Hoffman (and Negrete) to take over suggests both a return and an expansion, ie: a return to the Gimple vision for TWDU and then an expansion on that world, which fits into the grander scope as structured by TOWL, Tales, and WB. So far, this world has focused around the CRM, but not entirely.
Bringing in Negrete will, I hope, do a lot to fill out the somewhat bare bones worldbuilding that we've seen in DC so far. The worldbuilding of DC, in my opinion, has been extremely spare despite the "newness" of the setting. Though the character work with Maggie and Negan is extremely strong, the settings, like Manhattan, New Babylon, just aren't sticking, and this is mostly due, at least I think, to an excess of missing information. There's just too much being omitted. When does it take place on the timeline? How is it situated alongside TOWL, given its geographical proximity to the Philadelphia? This is all missing from Dead City, as is any mention of any members of Team Family aside from Maggie and Negan, and it makes the show feel isolated and stark. Something similar is going on in Daryl Dixon, and I get the feeling this is part of Gimple's aim in restructuring. To move away from the individualized feel of these stories as purely thematic and character-driven, almost artistic experimentation or new "proof of concept" for the franchise, and more towards a united front of worldbuilding in terms of the larger TWDU in his vision. I do hope this means we're moving toward a reunion.
Anyway, that was a long way of saying, I hope we get a release date soon!! Thoughts?
