Watch This Promo For The Walking Dead Midseason Premiere

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

After another crazy, heartbreaking midseason finale, The Walking Dead is in the middle of its annual hiatus. As popular as it’s ever been, the return is a highly anticipated affair, and AMC just released this new promo for the next episode, which shows off some fresh footage and hints at the new direction for the group of zombie apocalypse survivors.

Heads up, we might get into some spoilery talk beyond this point if you’re not caught up on season 5 of The Walking Dead.

The quality of this video is a little janky, but it does the trick and makes its points. Now that the group finds themselves back on the road again, there’s going to be action and the walkers are going to be a more foreground threat for a while. But as Michonne (Danai Gurira) says, and has been hinted at previously, they’re not just running away, but moving towards something, maybe a place where they can be safe. She gets almost as many lines here as she had in the first half of season 5.

Near the end you perhaps see what she’s talking about. The series follows the rough outline of the story from Robert Kirkman’s comic books that serve as the source material, and at around this point in the narrative they come to the Alexandria Safe Zone, a walled off community that still plays a huge part in the story. Fans of the comics have long suspected that this, or something similar, is the next stop for the group, and there have been hints that drive this point home.

When we saw photos of high walls the production built around a suburban neighborhood, and Alexandria was the first thing that came to mind. And when Beth (Emily Kinney) met Noah (Tyler James Williams), he talks about how his hometown, in Virginia, is walled off and safe. Now that he’s joined the team, they could very well be heading there, and it’s possible that it is those walls we see in this new footage. There is, of course, also the chance that this is a decoy, which wouldn’t be entirely surprising, especially considering there are seven more episodes after this one, but it is a strong possibility.

If this just whet your appetite, here’s a recent featurette where the cast and crew talk about the upcoming second half of season 5, including Chad Coleman (Tyreese) indicating that they go through even more hell coming up.

And if that still isn’t enough, here’s the trailer for the rest of season 5.

The Walking Dead returns to your TVs on Sunday, February 8, 2015.