The next episode of “The Walking Dead” is going to be MASSIVE.
I’ve checked out the mid-season premiere ahead of its February 14 release, and this is an episode you’ll want to watch live because everyone will be talking about it immediately after it airs. (You don’t have any Valentine’s Day plans right? Cool.)
I can’t say much, but it’s going to be a hugely satisfying episode for fans who may have been left wanting more at the end of last year’s mid-season finale.
The episode starts off with a bang and only continues to get bigger from there.
Your heart will be pounding in your chest throughout much of the first five minutes of the opener. So much so that the opening credits will serve as a breather — but only to get you prepped for the rest of the episode to come.
When we last saw the varying members of Rick’s group, many of them were still separated — Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham were approached by a strange group of people named the Saviors, Glenn was heading back home to find his wife Maggie, Carol and Morgan were hashing out their differences (violently), and Denise was kidnapped by the W man.
The stakes are pretty high for everyone, especially Rick who is leading a group of people through a horde of zombies in Alexandria.
Remember, the last episode ended with Rick slowly starting to wade through the zombie pack, and you can bet things aren’t going to go smoothly.
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Usually, you need to wait until the final 10-15 minutes of an episode of “The Walking Dead” for big action moments but Greg Nicotero, who directed the mid-season premiere, doesn’t waste any time getting to the good stuff. As he told Tech Insider ahead of the mid-season premiere, this is his “Night of the Living Dead” episode. A lot happens really quickly and you’ll probably want to go back and rewind to see a lot of things twice. If you have a DVR, this is the episode you’ll want to have to play over.
Expect to see a lot of story lines get wrapped up in preparation for the final episodes of season six embarking in a different direction.
A few quick things I’ll note about scene stealers:
Rick and Michonne are big stand outs in this episode. We’ve already seen the two teased fighting with their respective hatchet and machete in trailers. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but fans will be pretty impressed with father Gabriel, too, who has been a pretty unsavory character up until recently. And, of course, Daryl, has a few great moments. I’m not going to say anything else there.
If you felt like some of the episodes in the first half of the season were slogging along, telling you about other characters in Alexandria who you may not have necessarily cared about, you finally get a lot of pay off here. It’s all been building to this episode.
This is probably one of — if not — the strongest mid-season premieres we’ve seen. It’s so big, it probably could have been a finale.
By the end of the episode, you’ll be left with a few questions, but one of the biggest will probably be, “Who is Negan?”, the man teased at the end of last year’s mid-season finale.
Okay, my lips are zipped until Sunday when we’ll have plenty more coverage of the mid-season premiere. Comic fans, you may want to brush up on Volume 14, “No Way Out,” before the show returns.
“The Walking Dead” mid-season premiere airs on AMC Sunday, February 14.
