AMC The Walking Dead Season 4: Comic Book Characters to Join After Premiere as Daryl Dixon Faces 'Grueling' Episode
Some fresh meat is reportedly joining the survivors on The Walking Dead. The show's midseason premiere airs on Feb. 9 on AMC, but according to New York Post, new cast members are coming Feb. 16.
The newspaper reports that three characters from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic book series will appear "at the of end" of the episode scheduled to air on Feb. 16. Released synopses reveal that that episode is titled "Inmates."
Dr. Eugene Porter, Abraham Ford and Rosita Espinoza will reportedly be played by Josh McDermit (Last Comic Standing, Retired at 35), Michael Cudlitz (John Cooper, Southland) and Christian Serratos (Angela Weber, Twilight) respectively.
"In the quest for stability and safety, the group faces many obstacles," the episode's synopsis says.
The introduction of these new characters could be one of the reasons that Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl Dixon, describes the upcoming episodes as "our best eight episodes yet."
"The storylines, the acting, and the directing and the writing are top of our food chain," Reedus told Entertainment Weekly. "I'm so excited for people to see these episodes ... You really get an in-depth look at characters like you've never seen before."
Based on the characters from the comic books, the introduction of Porter, Ford and Epinoza could mean that a scientist, a sergeant with anger issues and his scandalous girlfriend could shake up the already broken up TWD crew.
"You have the same characters dealing with the same things, but the way that they are shot and the way that they are written ... that's the joy of this show that it's constantly evolving," Reedus continued. "As soon as you get comfortable, everything gets ripped out from under you. It's such good writing in the back eight."
One element almost guaranteed is that Daryl Dixon will be part of some big action in the last half of season 4.
"There's a big Daryl episode coming up soon," Reedus teased. "It was such a grueling, hard shoot, but it came out really well. There's a couple other episodes based around other characters who do some of the best work you've seen them do."