‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7 Trailer And Key Art Focus On Negan And Ezekiel And Raise Lots Of Questions
The Walking Dead Season 7 trailer was released this week, and it puts Ezekiel front and center and leaves fans with new questions in addition to the biggie: Who did Negan kill?
There has been lots of talk and theorizing about who met their bloody end when Negan wielded Lucille at some poor member of Rick’s clan. It’s a death that is sure to hit the hearts of Walking Dead fans hard. But Ezekiel is also a major character in the comic books upon which the AMC show is based, and he is expected to be just as major on the TV show.
Khary Payton will play the part of Ezekiel in Season 7, and he will bring pet tiger Shiva with him. On the Walking Dead TV show, as in the comic book series, he is the leader of another zombie apocalypse faction, the Kingdom. The trailer also seems to indicate that Morgan will get pretty deeply involved with people in the Kingdom, but we don’t know any more than that at this point. Does he really support Ezekiel, or is he getting in good with him in order to help his Walking Dead family, Rick and his clan?
In the comic books, Ezekiel and Rick are allies, which may mean nothing when it comes to the Walking Dead television show, which has often strayed from the TV show. The trailer seems to indicate a peaceful atmosphere in the Kingdom, with Ezekiel and his men killing zombies before they reach a town where people walk the streets in peace and gardens are cultivated.
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Along with the trailer, AMC also released some new Walking Dead key art this week that shows a ruthless Negan with a smile on his face as he wields Lucille.
Negan’s just begun. #TWD Season 7 premieres 10.23.16. pic.twitter.com/SY7Eo7j8kJ
— The Walking Dead (@WalkingDead_AMC) September 21, 2016
Does “Negan’s just begun” mean that we’ll see him kill multiple fan favorites over the course of Season 7 of The Walking Dead?
Nerdist reports that the press release accompanying the key art reads, in part, “[T]he first half of season seven sees the group fractured, broken, bereaved, and picking up the pieces while living under the thumb of oppression. Negan will have successfully brought the survivors under his will, brutally convincing them to live under his rules with a deadly and horrific example of what happens if they don’t.”
A barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat is a pretty convincing weapon, but there are some pretty rebellious characters on The Walking Dead, and it wouldn’t be surprising if one or more of them pushed it too far in Season 7.
Noticeably missing from either the key art or the Season 7 trailer is any Walking Dead character who could have been killed by Negan. The secrecy continues with that mystery.
And speaking of mystery, at one point in the trailer, someone who appears to be giving Morgan a tour of the Kingdom tells him, “No one back home needs to know about this. Any of it.”
So the Kingdom does have something to hide it seems. And then there’s the scene with a pig eating a body. Is this a zombie or someone else?
There are a couple more things of special interest in the new Walking Dead trailer. One is a shot of someone falling from a freeway. We can’t tell who it is, but it could be a continuation of a scene we saw in a previous Walking Dead trailer in which Abraham was struggling with some walkers on a bridge. So maybe Negan doesn’t kill Abraham, but he ends up dying at the hands of some walkers.
We do see one other person who wasn’t in the Negan lineup in the Walking Dead Season 6 finale – Tara. We just see her running, but from whom? And there is a shot of a new female character peeking around a wall. We can’t tell if she’s associated with a group we’ve already seen or a totally new one. Or is she on her own and looking for some other people to join up with?
So many questions about The Walking Dead Season 7. Thank God the wait is almost over, although not close enough. The Walking Dead returns to AMC on October 23 at 9 p.m. ET. Check out the latest trailer below.
[Featured Image by AMC]
