Warning Spoilers Ahead – Ed.

Dead pigs, dead teens, and dead people were the constant theme for the much-anticipated return of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Last season left many viewers wondering what was to come of Rick and his ragtag army after joining forces with the remaining members of Woodbury. The somewhat sluggish season premiere had students split on how they felt.

“I thought the season four finale was trash, the last thing they should be doing is bringing in more people to the prison, more people just means more mouths to feed,” junior journalism major Farrah Lopez said.
Other students such as senior criminal justice major Conor Whelan also had problems with the show’s finale.

“I’m not sure if I liked the fact they jumped ahead for what seemed like a year,” Whelan said. “It was strange but I liked the end of the episode though, it was a nice twist.”

But some students felt otherwise.

“I think it’s going to be interesting to see how they’re going to play out these new character dynamics,” senior environmental studies major James Ward said. “They never have characters that don’t serve a purpose.”

As the episode starts we see that Rick has started farming within the prison walls and we learn that they now have many new members to the group, some of which are already dead before the episode ends. Some people were left longing for an appearance of The Governor, the nemeses of the previous season and were questioning why such a vital character is barely mentioned.

“I really wanted to see what happened with him, but I’m sure he’ll be back at some point,” senior accounting major Kenny Hoolahan said.

One of the biggest moments of foreshadowing occurred at the beginning of the episode when Rick is digging in the field and he comes across a gun. Shortly after he discovers that one of the pigs he was raising is sick and later in the episode it dies. Once the pig dies from unknown causes, Dylan, a new character, dies suddenly after taking a shower.

“Clearly the pig dying and Dylan turning into a walker are connected,” Lopez said. “I think the water is probably contaminated.”

My two cents: The season premiere was very well put together. The best parts were the ones that were merely shrugged off by most viewers. For instance Rick doesn’t look any better, so after all this time, he still isn’t doing well. In fact he’s doing so poorly that they’ve created what was briefly mentioned as ‘the council’. Since the prison now has many new residents, they have formed some kind of a democracy, taking away a lot of Rick’s power, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because the dude has literally lost his mind.

I think the connection between the gun, the pig and Dylan was a very sneaky way for the producers to tell us that no matter how hard they try it’s going to be impossible for them to escape death. I’m not sure how long the threat will exist because from what we can tell from the season preview we’ve seen, it’s going to get hectic really quick.