Summary
- Fans of The Walking Dead noticed Walkers having longer hair post-Season 9, sparking confusion.
- Theories behind the long Walker hair include extended survival time, virus effects, and practical makeup reasons.
- Scott M. Gimple hints at more infected and new character exploration in the future of the TWD universe.
The Walkers in AMC’s The Walking Dead are some of the worst and most terrifying zombie types ever witnessed on TV. From their snapping, open mouths, and decaying skin to their sinister bloodshot eyes, TWD perfected the appearance of what a "zombie" should look like. Although there are many different varieties of Walkers found throughout The Walking Dead universe, fans of the show have noticed one particular detail about these animated corpses that seemingly changed after season 9 that has them a little confused.
While some of the roots of the zombie genre go all the way back to folklore stories in Haitian culture, which include their beliefs in reanimated corpses, one of the earliest known references to "zombies" in literature can be traced back to ancient myths and practices across various cultures, including Ancient Greece. However, the modern zombie genre was largely developed by the works of American filmmaker George A. Romero, particularly his 1968 classic film, Night of the Living Dead. For centuries, the idea of someone coming back to life to mindlessly munch on another person's flesh has been the bane of nightmares and something that many film and TV show directors have honed into in a bid to terrify their audiences. While some creations get it wrong, like 2003’s House of the Dead, the early seasons of The Walking Dead captivated viewers with its all-too-real imposing threat of Walkers.
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Walkers Seemingly Have Different Hairstyles After Season 9 of TWD
On Reddit, fans of The Walking Dead have noticed a strange hair detail on Walkers after Season 9 of the post-apocalyptic AMC series. Although it's not clear if all the infected have this feature, it certainly looks like many have much longer hair and fans can't really understand why, since they are meant to be dead, leaving no room for new cell growth. A slew of images of these long-haired walkers have been posted on the thread which show off their long scraggly hair, leaving most fans baffled. However, some fans think they may have answers to this strange change in hairstyles.
"We are farther into the apocalypse, so long-haired walkers are humans that survived for some amount of time after the outbreak and haven’t had their hair cut," explained one Redditor, while giving another opinion to state that "the virus keeps the body in some type of reanimation, (so) the hair continues to grow even if it’s slowly." However, the likely reason is that it may just look cooler for them to walk around with longer hair rather than bald or short hair since it can showcase the dirt and disheveled look better. The other reason might also be that after death, the body can take on the appearance of growth, which is actually caused by the skin and soft tissues shrinking and retracting around the hair and nails and not actual growth.
One comment had a pretty good and realistic answer to the whole Walker shaggy hair dilemma. "I bet it hides the seams of prosthetics and gives the makeup people less head to cover." This would certainly be a better explanation since The Walking Dead's makeup artists would have to cover hundreds of actors so shortening the timeframe on each person would be a smart thing to do. For those who can't wait to see what's in store for Walkers and other storylines in The Walking Dead's universe, Scott M. Gimple disclosed that he would love to open up the world of the spin-off Tales of the Walking Dead when asked whether more episodes of the anthology series could be in the future, so fans can expect a lot more hideous infected and the exploration of new characters further down the line.
Dead City season 2 is set to begin on May 4, 2025, and Daryl Dixon season 3 arriving sometime in the autumn of this year.
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- Release Date
- 2010 - 2022
- Network
- AMC
- Showrunner
- Frank Darabont, Angela Kang, Scott M. Gimple, Glen Mazzara
Cast
-
Norman ReedusDaryl Dixon -
Melissa McBrideCarol Peletier
WHERE TO WATCH
- Directors
- David Boyd, Ernest R. Dickerson, Billy Gierhart, Guy Ferland, Laura Belsey, Jeffrey F. January, Michael Cudlitz, Sharat Raju, Alrick Riley, Michael Slovis, Michelle MacLaren, Rosemary Rodriguez, Seith Mann, Tricia Brock, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Daniel Sackheim, Fred Toye, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Jon Amiel, Kari Skogland, Kevin Dowling, Tawnia McKiernan, Larry Teng, Julius Ramsay
- Franchise(s)
- The Walking Dead
Source: Reddit