Most fans are probably already counting the days till season 3 begins for AMC’s mega-hit series, “The Walking Dead”. After the amazing season finale last week, we are all ready to see Michonne kick some ass next season.

Showrunner Glen Mazzara has already begun teasing the new season that kicks off next October. He recently did a conference call interview with a handful of journalists and explained what we can expect out of Season 3.

When asked about what we can expect from the band of survivors in new season, Mazzara spoke about the new character of Michonne.

Michonne is one of the lead characters in the graphic novel so we’re excited to finally introduce her. She is a loner, she’s a kick ass character and she’s very dynamic so we really see her as a very, very important addition to the cast. She’s a significant character and she’ll be carrying a lot of story so we’re excited about her.

We’re also excited about (Danai Gurira) who is the young actress who is going to play this role, so we’re lucky to have her and look forward to seeing what she does with it.

As we have discussed here at the site before, T-Dog’s lack of character development, well actually a lack of anything remotely resembling a storyline, and Mazzara has admitted to having the character left to the side. But he promises to develop the character more fully in Season 3.

You know what? The T-Dog question, I’m glad you’re asking that. I’ve been surprised at this because I’ve worked on shows before that have had characters in the background and have been on a slow burn. If you look at Dave Rees Snell’s character Ronnie from the Shield, that was a character that we brought along throughout that series and he had a very significant role at the end.

With T-Dog, I’ll admit, T-Dog has been off to the side and has been forgotten and part of my goal as showrunner was to really address developing Rick’s character and some other stuff. So poor T-Dog was left by the side and that’s something that now that he has survived the finale we’re going to correct. I think (IronE Singleton) has done a fantastic job of establishing a character and making people interested in him with just very, very little to say.

But you know, that’s the strength of the show. I think moving forward hopefully we’ll make it a strength and that’s a character we’re looking to develop in a significant way. So that’s a fair question and you know, we haven’t done our work yet with T-Dog but we’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to it.

Do you hate Lori? If so, you are not alone. Many find her irritating, incapable, and frustrating. She can’t seem to keep tabs on her own child, and causes many of the problems within the group. Mazzara addresses her character but says he doesn’t find her as irritating as the fans do.

I think Lori is a compelling and interesting character. I think she is realistic in a lot of ways and she’s certainly a character that people are talking about so I don’t find her irritating.

But I think it’s interesting that people are so focused on her and, you know, I think the work ahead of that is to see where in Season 3 we have to look at the Rick and Lori relationship a little more closely. She’s the one who put Rick and Shane in motion to try to kill each other and so that’s an interesting place for us to start and we’ll certainly examine that character. I just don’t know if we really need to start creating false speeds to make her more likeable. That’s not part of the plan for us.

AMC and the producers have announced several major storyline for the new season such as the casting of David Morrissey as the much-anticipated character of The Governor, as well as the prison as a location in the much of the upcoming season, and Danai Gurira as Michonne. Many are wondering if the prison will be only in season 3 or if it will be something we can expect to see for a while. Mazzara has confirmed that he sees the prison going longer than just the third season.

That’s a great question. Right now I do see that prison as a significant storyline for Season 3 and into Season 4. I do think that’s a major storyline. But as you know, we were on the farm for longer than perhaps people wanted even though there were reasons for that.

But I think what we want to do is make sure that that prison does not become claustrophobic. I think the farm played a little claustrophobic for people. The farm — now that the entire landscape has fallen to the zombie apocalypse and zombies are literally at the gate of the prison — if you see the graphic novel, that prison is really a very, very small safe corner and there’s a lot of danger around. So it won’t feel like we are bottled up in the same way that we were on the farm in Season 2.

So I do think that prison is a significant storyline but we’re interested also in opening up the world too. There are other factors out there in the world, other groups so I think that Rick’s group is really stumbling into a much larger world.

Tensions within our band of survivors have been growing throughout the series almost to the point that we wonder whether they will be destroyed by themselves or the zombies. Mazzara assures us that the zombies will not take a backseat and their threat will always be there.

Zombies will never take a back seat, okay. We will always have the human drama and we would like to introduce a significant human threat. We love writing the zombie material and I think those zombies are now fully integrated into the world. We’re not waiting for the zombies anymore to reach us. They are there; they are within our eyesight all the time and part of the landscape. So we expect there to still be a balance of zombie and human threat but the zombies will never take a back seat on this show.

For fans of the comic book series, the introduction of Michonne was about time. Mazzara talked about whether the show will start reflecting the fantastical nature of the graphic novel.

That’s a great question and let’s be honest- the reason that the character is cloaked at the end was because we had not cast the actress yet so that was a cheat there. But it’s interesting because we were thinking about that character during the casting process and we were just wondering how theatrical IS Michonne? That’s quite a theatrical entrance and that was something that we didn’t realize at the time.

But then yesterday we were in the writer’s room talking about her and her back story and a lot of the writers had very heightened pitches and my own sensibility is to keep the show grounded, to keep it gritty. That’s where I’m comfortable as a writer and as a storyteller.

So I do think that that’s an interesting character and that she feels like she stepped off those pages right into the show. I think that’s exciting. That’s a challenge for us but I think we know how to keep it real and keep it grounded because if it doesn’t feel real, I think the audience will not be able to put themselves in the immediate circumstances of the story.

Season 3 is set to begin in October and has been given an extended episode order of 16 full episodes.