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Walking Dead Star Wants To Return For A Gamma Origin Story Spinoff
Thora Birch, who appeared on the tenth season of The Walking Dead, wants to return to explore the character's origin, perhaps in a spinoff.

Thora Birch, who appeared in The Walking Dead season 10, is open to reprising her role in some way or another, perhaps through the upcoming anthology spinoff Tales of the Walking Dead. Birch began her career as a child performer, appearing in Hocus PocusAmerican Beauty, and Ghost World. In more recent years she’s appeared in a string of independent films such as Affairs of StateAbove Suspicion, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

The Walking Dead follows a group of survivors in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, and how they must contend with the new world order. The ninth season saw the introduction of The Whisperers, a mysterious group that uses masks that look like zombies to get by. One of the major players in the group was Birch’s Gamma, who was killed off in the middle of the tenth season. The Walking Dead is set to release a plethora of spinoffs once the flagship series concludes.

In an interview with ComicBook, Birch says she’d be open to reprising the role, saying she’d be interested in exploring Gamma’s backstory. She says she has her own ideas for where Gamma came from, but there hasn’t been rumored interest from the franchise. She doesn’t want to rule it out, however, given a large amount of content the franchise is greenlighting. Read her quote below:

I don’t think anyone will entertain it, but honestly, I do have a personal dream type of fantasy idea about the origin story of Gamma, I think it’d be fascinating. So, I mean, I’m not ruling anything out.

One of the show’s spinoffs that Birch could appear in is Tales of the Walking Dead, which is set to have an anthology structure where new characters and settings are explored with every episode. Samantha Morton, who played Alpha, the head of The Whisperers, is confirmed to be reprising her role in the new series, setting a precedent for old characters returning. Tales of the Walking Dead is just one of several planned The Walking Dead spinoffs, including an unnamed Daryl-focused series, and Isle of the Dead which will focus on Negan and Maggie.

Though The Walking Dead may have bitten off more than it can chew when it comes to spin-offs and followups, the world-building leaves a lot of room for more stories, with the success of Fear the Walking Dead showing that. The Walking Dead has always shown that interesting characters can make the overused zombie apocalypse setting interesting again, leading to many rich narratives. Though it’s unknown if Birch will appear again in the franchise, she would be a boon to Tales of the Walking Dead just as she was for The Walking Dead.