The situation revolving around The Walking Dead’s latest cliffhanger—a recreation of an infamous murder scene from the comics that AMC has managed to stretch out so far for two months and counting—is pretty ridiculous. Turns out, however, that its absurdity cannot match the lengths AMC is going to keep the outcome secret.


The detail comes out of an extensive Hollywood Reporter piece about the show’s next season, and how it intends to deal with the consequences of Negan brandishing his barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat in the faces of the majority of the show’s principal cast. But how do you avoid getting the cliffhanger you’ve inconceivably stretched out for months and months spoiled ahead of broadcast? By filming the opening scene of the upcoming seventh season over and over again, each time with a different actor taking the fatal blow.

According to THR’s sources, that’s exactly what AMC has done, in an attempt to dissuade spoiler-hungry set photographers from figuring out who really dies. There were 11 potential victims—Rick, Carl, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie, Abraham, Sasha, Daryl, Eugene, Aaron, and Rosita—so that means AMC recorded 11 takes of the same scene. The director of the episode and the show’s producers will then slot in the true take in the editing process.


Kinda a crazy length to go to for something that viewers should have probably gotten to learn in last season’s finale, isn’t it?