The Whisperers Will Debut On The Walking Dead Really Soon

***Warning! Spoilers from The Walking Dead TV show and Comic are below!***

The Walking Dead returned to our TVs this October, and kicked things off with a bang. The premiere episode shattered everyone’s expectations and then some. All the while, introducing us to some key storylines from the comic. With the introduction of Negan and the Saviors, fans of the comics are very aware of the impending war between the 4 neighboring societies, and what comes after. After the group defeats Negan and imprisons him within Alexandria, everyone meets a new and even more terrifying threat than The Saviors themselves, and they’re called The Whisperers.

The Walking Dead showrunner Scott Gimple himself recently let on that we would indeed be seeing The Whisperers “sooner than later”. If scenes from the next few episodes are any indicator, we’ll definitely be seeing them way ahead of schedule, as the storylines from the comic are rapidly approaching singularity with those of the tv series. For the initiated, The Whisperers are a group of scavengers that travel by wearing the blood and skin of walkers, and only speaking in whispers so they don’t alert the undead. They move slowly and precisely and will only run if their lives are in danger. Their leader is a woman named Alpha, who does not hesitate to kill and at times is shown to be extremely cold and calculating. 

Released last week, the latest Walking Dead trailer shows Negan giving the Saviors a rousing speech, while the rest of the group is out on perilous scavenging missions. This is also the first time that we catch up with Tara and Heath, who’ve been missing since last season. We see Tara running through the woods, being chased by an unseen threat, but then the trailer cuts to what I suspect is the first in-show glimpse of The Whisperers. Around the :24 second mark is where we see an especially troubling group of walkers approaching someone rapidly. If you look closely, it appears that some of the walkers are still fresh, with only worn looking clothes, and one of them appears to be looking around. It’s not uncommon for The Whisperers to travel along with a herd of the undead, wearing their skin and guts as camouflage, much like Rick has done before.

With the revelation that we’ll pick up with Tara and Heath on this Sunday’s episode, one has to wonder if we’ll actually see them this soon. In the comics we don’t see them until around issue #130, whereas the storyline from the show only sets us at issue #103. It’ll be interesting to see if they actually show up, but one thing is for sure, we’re in for a wild ride towards the mid-season finale in a few short weeks.

via AMC