Spoilers for the season seven premiere of The Walking Dead, which aired last night
To call the premiere of The Walking Dead’s seventh season traumatic would be an understatement. I guess that’s a testament to the strong writing and superb acting because it packed a sucker punch despite the cheesy lines. There was definitely a manipulative aspect to it, and it felt like we were being beat down like Rick, like they wanted the audience to feel the utter despair, fear and defeat that Rick experienced. It worked somewhat and was shocking, upsetting and heartbreaking. Just thinking about it gives me a lump in my throat. I only watched the first few minutes of Talking Dead last night but the actors on stage, Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira and Lauren Cohan, got choked up talking about losing their friends. This is the last chance you’ll have to turn back if you don’t want to know who died, ok? I’ll do a half-recap but I would suggest you read TVLine’s recap if you’d like a more thorough one.

While kneeling in the circle, Rick told Negan under his breath, “Not today, not tomorrow, but I’m going to kill you.” Negan then took Rick in the RV to assert his authority over him, saying that Rick’s ax was his, throwing it out the door and forcing him to go out into the fog to find it amid a hoard of walkers. Rick kept having flashbacks of his friends, but at this point we still didn’t know who the victim was. Rick climbed on top of the RV and two commercial breaks later we got a flashback of the scene where Negan picked his first victim. Abraham got bludgeoned to death which I frankly did not expect. (The dude I talked to at Wendy’s over the weekend wearing an “All My Friends Are Walkers” t-shirt told me it would be Abraham though.)

During the flashback Negan kept hitting Abraham well past the point where he was dead, reducing him to a bloody pulp. Negan then went over to Rosita and teased her about being with Abraham. Daryl got up to defend Rosita and was dragged to the ground by Negan’s goons.

Negan then turned to Glenn and started hitting him and it was horrible. We saw his eye popped out, his head half crushed as he struggled to talk. He gurgled “Maggie I’ll find you.” This scene was very close to what was shown in the comics, when Negan beat Glenn to death. I could barely watch it. Negan then gave the absolutely cringeworthy line “Lucille is thirsty. She is a vampire bat.”

We were taken back to Rick, who was on top of the RV, trying to rest but really just shellshocked. Negan started shooting through the roof and commanding Rick to bring his ax. Rick jumped up on a walker hanging off a bridge from a chain at its neck. The walker gradually separated from the weight as other walkers grabbed at his him. Negan started shooting walkers from the back of the RV and Rick fought his way through, having visions of each of his people being killed by Negan.

When Rick got back to the RV with the ax Negan told him that it must hurt to no longer be in charge. They returned to the site of the bloodbath and Rick was again made to grovel. Negan instructed his men to train guns on everyone’s heads.

Negan made Carl get up and kneel next to his dad. He put a belt around Carl’s arm, drew a line around it with a sharpie and forced him facedown on the ground with his arms spread. Negan then told Rick to cut his son’s arm off or he would kill his entire team. Michonne begged “You don’t have to do this, we understand.” Negan said that he would crush Carl’s skull if Rick didn’t cut off his arm. Rick begged Negan to take his arm instead, which apparently wasn’t an option. Carl told his dad just to do it. Negan counted down to three, but Rick didn’t couldn’t bring the ax down on Carl’s arm. Negan then brought his point home “You answer to me. You provide for me. You belong to me. Right?” Then he told Rick “that is the look I wanted to see,” referring to Rick’s submission.

Negan gloated “Today was a productive damn day. Now I hope that you get it now. That you understand how things work. Things have changed. Whatever you had going for you. That is over now.”

Negan’s goons loaded Daryl into the truck and Negan vowed to torture Daryl if Rick doesn’t uphold his end of the bargain.

When our group was finally alone Maggie, still in shock and still in medical crisis with her unborn baby, told everyone to go back to Alexandria. Sasha vowed to take Maggie to Hilltop. The group gathered around their dead and took the bodies to be buried.

At the end there was bizarre fantasy scene of everyone sitting around a dinner table outside eating, including the dead people, which was a call back to Negan’s line about how they’re not all going to grow old together sitting around having Sunday dinner. Rick is devastated after having been psychologically tortured.

[Recap of The Walking Dead]

I’m so sad that Glenn was killed. I read the comics up until Glenn’s death and was to upset after that so I gave up at that point. I was hoping that Glenn would remain on the show because he’s such a beloved character and because we were already teased with a multi-episode cliffhanger where we waited to see his fate. Fans hated that. If we learned anything about The Walking Dead over the last six seasons it’s that they don’t listen to fans and assume we’ll keep coming back no matter what. They’re probably right.

During The Talking Dead, which was a live episode from the Hollywood Forever cemetery, Andrew Lincoln described the process of filming. “It was 9 days of breaking a man…. Unbearable… I had to sleep for a week.” He also called Steven Yeun his brother and said “this is a huge loss.” It’s a loss for the fans too. Steven Yeun and Michael Cudlitz were also on Talking Dead discussing their character’s deaths. Popsugar has a summary.

Photos credit: AMC via TVLine