Last year's mid-season 5 finale of The Walking Dead was quite a shocker as viewers felt the pain of the survivors as Beth met her fate. So what is in store for the rest of Season 5 when The Walking Dead returns to AMC on its February 8th Premiere Date? There are some spoilers below, so do not read unless you have either read the comic book source material or you just have to know.
There is a teaser trailer out on Screen Rant that shows very little but the group of survivors all together. In fact, the teaser trailer is just that, a tease. All it really shows is the group looking like they are about to attack a horde of walkers with the tagline of "surviving together is all that matters". Considering that the group has essentially stopped splitting off, it is good to emphasize that everyone is together again. The bigger emphasis is that there isn't really a safehouse for them anymore, like the prison from Season 3.
There is a lot that can be done with them wandering around again. International Business Times talks about how Daryl Dixon (Norman Reddus) is dealing with Beth's death, and in a way that will spiral him into a dark depression. Considering that his character is already pretty callous, it is going to be difficult to see him get even more hardened over someone that he truly cared for.
This matches a previous article that we have written where showrunner Scott M. Gimple stated that there is "more pain to come for Grimes, Daryl Dixon, and the rest of the survivors".
If The Walking Dead series means to follow the graphic novel source material of The Walking Dead comic, then the survivors are probably going to need to head to Washington D.C. There they will find that "safe city" where a wall has been erected to keep the zombies out, and civilization in. This is clearly the direction that the show is going, if it wants to follow some semblance of its source material. Or, it could just reject the source material and go in an entirely different direction altogether.
Then there is the Morgan Jones factor. We have already talked about how Morgan has briefly shown up in the previous article, and it is possible that this character from Rick's hometown could make an appearance once again. Perhaps a bigger role from Lennie James could be some way that the TV series will distinguish itself from the comic book series even more.
Considering that it has already been announced that there will be a spin-off series that we reported before, taking place in Los Angeles, it certainly is even more opportunity to stray from the comic book source material while building a bigger world for the TV storyline.
There is another wrinkle that is worthy of mentioning when it comes to The Walking Dead. When I was at CES, I got to see Samsung's press conference where they announced S-UHD TV. What I didn't report about was that the Executive Producer of The Walking Dead TV Series, David Alpert, had a walk-on appearance. This was when Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics, was talking about Milk VR, a place where VR content for such devices like the Oculus Rift. He teased that The Walking Dead was working its way into VR video. In other words, we could be looking at an era where the walkers from The Walking Dead could surround you on all sides, thanks to 360 degree video.
