AMC
Tonight is the finale of The Walking Dead Season 9. It’s Episode 16, called “The Storm,” which is a play on the name of last week’s episode: “The Calm Before.” But if you’re watching tonight, you might notice that tonight’s episode is going on longer than you might expect. Just how long is the episode tonight? Will it be as long as last week’s?
Unfortunately, last week’s episode’s feature film length is not going to be the new norm for The Walking Dead. And even though we really would love to see the finale be as long as last week’s episode, it won’t be. Last week’s episode was 87 minutes long. Tonight’s episode is just an extra nine minutes in length. Tonight’s episode begins at 9 p.m. Eastern and is scheduled to end at 10:09 p.m. Eastern. So we’ll get an extra nine minutes but nothing close to what we enjoyed last week.
You’ll want to check your DVR if you’re recording the show, to make sure that the timing is set right and you don’t miss anything. DirecTV customers and other DVR customers actually missed the last 30 minutes of last week’s episode because the DVRs stopped recording at exactly 10 p.m. Eastern. You definitely don’t want to deal with that again. Talking Dead said this had to do with the information AMC sent to cable companies and it wasn’t the cable companies’ fault. Still, if you’re reading this before The Walking Dead airs, you’ll want to add some extra time to the recording just in case.
Of course, considering how many commercials AMC airs during The Walking Dead, you can also expect a lot of commercials thanks to the longer length.
It’s not unusual to have longer episodes in The Walking Dead world anymore. Rick’s final episode, which was Season 9 Episode 5, was eight minutes longer than normal. (It’s kind of hard to believe that happened this season. It feels so long ago.) The Season 9 premiere was practically movie length, lasting a full 86 minutes and ending at 10:26 p.m. Eastern. And the midseason 9 premiere on February 10 was 14 minutes longer than normal.
The showrunner for The Walking Dead, Angela Kang, told EW that there will be some big surprises in the last two episodes of the season, so that means more surprises for tonight. She said, “There’s a lot of really exciting things that we do and some things that we have not done before on the show.” She also said there won’t be major cliffhangers, but certain character arcs will “have a bit of a closed end to them” that will “feel like part of a chapter in a character’s journey.”
Let us know what you thought about the episode by tweeting the author of this story. You can stay updated on new stories about The Walking Dead by joining the email list here and choosing the “Scifi and Fantasy TV” category.