‘Forever’: ‘Walking Dead’s’ Emily Kinney To Guest, Hilarie Burton’s Dominatrix To Return In Episode About Obsession

Emily Kinney is returning to TV for her first role after her character, Beth Greene, died in the midseason finale of The Walking Dead Season 5, “Coda,” a death that some fans are still not over. Now, the actress, who has guest starred on The Good Wife, The Big C, Law & Order: SVU, and The Following, will be appearing in a Forever episode later this season.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Kinney will be guest starring in Forever Episode 16, and it is the same episode that will bring back Hilarie Burton as the dominatrix Iona Payne. Burton appeared in Episode 8, “The Ecstasy of Agony,” earlier this season, and while she was initially a suspect during that investigation, she was cleared. That episode also saw Henry getting some firsthand experience of Iona’s kind of therapy session. Watch the video below to see Iona in action from her first episode.

Executive producer Matt Miller has given a tease of what to expect when Iona shows up next, as well as the kind of character Kinney will be playing.

“[The episode] involves a college-age student that gets involved in a very intricate game of role playing, where she’s basically fulfilled someone’s fantasy that dates back to the 1970s, so she dresses up in 1970s garb, but she ends up dead. For Henry [Ioan Gruffudd], he’s very easily able to connect to that kind of a story because he understands somebody that would be fixated on a moment of their past that they can’t get past. Emily plays a character that also falls into this idea of obsession. It’s all an episode about obsession and the things we can’t let go of.”

Other spoilers reveal that another upcoming Forever episode is going to see “a real struggle” for Henry, as Miller teased elsewhere for EW.

“We will see him take his own life at some point to get out of a bind.”

While Henry’s immortality is very much at the front and center of the series, so is his relationship with Jo, with some fans wondering if it will become more than just a professional one. Ioan Gruffudd has told TVLine that if the two characters did get together, “it would be a totally different show by that stage.”

“It’s all… very natural and very warm – and very loving without any real romance there at all. I think that’s what people are attracted to. You can imagine them being together or maybe want them to be together, but it’s such a subtle thing that we have and it’s rather beautiful. It’s almost as if we ever did get together, the show might be over.”

Back in November, the Inquisitr reported that Forever is “certain” to be on the list of shows cancelled this season, but it did get a full season pickup, so anything is possible.

Forever Season 1 airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.

[Image via ABC]