The return of AMC’s hit zombie drama The Walking Dead may still be a ways off—season 5 doesn’t start until Sunday, October 12—but, as always, they’re making sure that we have a lot to talk about over the off season. It looks like Rick (Andrew Lincoln), the grizzled protagonist, is making strides towards becoming the character fans of the comics know and love, which you can see in this short new teaser. In a second clip, we also get to catch up with some characters out wandering in the wilderness. Another hot topic of conversation lately has been the sexuality of another character, namely everyone’s favorite redneck biker, Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), and we’re learning why it is that we know very little about it.

The main difference between comic Rick and TV Rick is decisiveness. TV Rick has been prone to pussyfooting around, weighing pros and cons of various scenarios, while comic Rick is all about action. Not necessarily by choice, but in a world where the dead have risen and are trying to eat you, and where most of the people you encounter also want to kill you somehow, the situation often dictates that you make a decision and you make it now.

What would you do if you were starving, exhausted, and injured, out in the middle of a snowstorm, and you were forced to make one of the most difficult decisions of your life, all based on your capacity for friendship and forgiveness? It’s not a question that normally pops up in people’s day-to-day lives, but for The Walking Dead: The Game‘s Clementine, it’s just a Tuesday afternoon. Her transition from war-worn group member to take-charge leader is at the heart of “No Going Back,” the game’s excellent Season 2 finale, and it’s up to players to traverse the emotional landscape to allow her to reach the other side with any of her morals intact. It’s a rough journey, to say the least.

Starting off in the middle of the gunfight that ended Episode 4, “No Going Back” exemplifies its title from the very first second. While I’m trying to keep spoilers to a minimum for this review, I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying the Russians are all disposed of in a most bloody manner here, leaving Clementine with Alvin and Rebecca’s baby, which Kenny becomes obsessed with and names Alvin Jr. The rebellious Jane also makes an appearance early on, joining Luke, Bonnie, and Mike to make this something of a full family unit. And we all know what happens when family gets together under duress, right?

A video game is often only as good as its lead character, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Game rests comfortably on the shoulders of young Clementine, a survivor who has gone through just about every kind of tragedy in the game’s two seasons. The Season 2 finale, “No Going Back,” will be available for download tomorrow, and the five-minute preview seen above makes me want to put on a battered baseball cap and hit the streets, looking for a reason to live. It’s kind of depressing.

When we last saw Clementine in Episode 4, she was in the middle of a Mexican standoff between members of her group and members of another group, called into play by an asshole twerp named Arvo. We didn’t even get a “Next Time on…” segment at the end, making one wonder just what the hell is in store for these characters.

AMC’s mega-hit The Walking Dead returns to your TVs for season 5 on Sunday, October 12, and while that’s still a long way off, that’s not going to stop the network from pimping the popular zombie drama. We got a ton of news and information coming out of San Diego Comic-Con last month, with a slow trickle ever since. Now they’ve released a short new teaser just to make sure you keep paying attention.

Clocking in at just over 11 seconds, this brief video doesn’t reveal much in the way of details, but it certainly does set the mood. Full of ominous imagery, shadowy characters, and tense sounding music, it teases “what comes next,” and from all appearances, what’s on the way is going to be dark and bleak. This seems to jive with what we’ve heard from the cast and crew, who all said that the opening scene of season 5 is shocking, even to them.

Season 4 of The Walking Dead hits the home video market later this month—on August 26 to be precise—and the Anchor Bay product is sure to full of extras and bonus materials (you can even get the sweet special edition Blu-ray with unique “Tree Walker” packaging designed by McFarlane Toys). If you just can’t wait until then, here’s a new deleted scene from season 4 that features Michonne (Danai Gurira) and a back-from-the-dead Hershel (Scott Wilson).

This scene, which appeared over at EW, comes from near the end of the first half of the season, when the Governor (David Morrissey) is plotting his full frontal assault on the prison where Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and company are holed up. Set between the time when the former Woodbury despot kidnaps Michonne and Hershel, you understand why this was cut, but it does provide a nice glimpse of what they went through while in his nefarious clutches. We know how all of this ends, with the prison in ruins and Hershel’s severed head rolling around on the ground. It’s a bummer all around.

Watching AMC’s The Walking Dead will bring to mind a lot of questions, such as, “What’s Rick going to yell at now?” and “When is Carol’s luck going to run out?” Less likely are questions about these characters’ sexualities, since this is a series with a severe lack of bone zones. One Walking Dead comic reader openly pondered if Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon was gay or not, and creator Robert Kirkman’s answers seem to imply it’s a definite possibility.

In the fan-favorite letter column in The Walking Dead #130, reader Nick Muller compares Daryl to the comic character Jesus, another loner-type badass who was revealed to be gay quite a few issues after he was introduced, and wonders if Daryl will see a similar outing in the future. And Kirkman, never one to just blatantly reveal anything, is pretty up front about how he and AMC execs have been looking at the issue. Here’s part of his response:

All I can say is that it’s been discussed. We have very specific ideas about Daryl’s sexuality (or the seeming lack thereof), and if there’s ever a quiet period in the show where he’s not constantly distracted by crossbowing…we’ll tackle it on the show.