It’s time to deck the halls with buckets of guts, apparently, as AMC+—Motto: “A thing that exists”—announced today that it’s just made plans for the first-ever The Walking Dead holiday special. The hour-long program will be hosted by Talking Dead’s Chris Hardwick (sigh), and will feature past and current cast members from the fundamentally unkillable zombie drama reminiscing about the series, and also about the true meaning of Christmas. (Or, at least, generally chatting “about the holiday season.”)
And we’ll be honest: When we hear “holiday special,” our minds jump immediately to Bea Arthur crooning in a cantina, not the millionth collection of Zoom panels being broadcast on the air this year. Still, they got a decent list of cast members to dial in, with Lauren Cohan, Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt, Khary Payton, Eleanor Matsuura, Cooper Andrews, Cassady McClincy, Lauren Ridloff, Cailey Fleming, Emily Kinney, and IronE Singleton all making appearances. Also, we’ll apparently be getting a fresh new rendition of “Up On The Housetop” from Kinney (who played Beth Greene on several seasons of the show), and—wait for it— “a parody on the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas,’ sung by Payton, Andrews, Matsuura and McClincy,” so, hey, maybe this thing will have some Star Wars Holiday Special energy to it after all, huh?
The special—which will also feature a partial table read from one of the show’s upcoming episodes, for those whose tastes run less to zombie-themed Christmas song parodies—will air on AMC+ on Sunday, December 13.