The Walking Dead: A ‘gut frappéing’ Valentine’s Day Massacre?

Season 6 of AMC’S The Walking Dead ended for the midseason break saying goodbye to someone and leaving us in peril with Negan’s group, a Wolf and a herd of hungry walkers.

We weren’t left on a cliff in the midseason finale, we were left meandering happily right near the cliff. It was like doing yoga next to a burning building. But yoga prepares us to deal with stress, and stress is coming.

When The Hollywood Reporter asked showrunner Scott M. Gimple how deadly the midseason premiere will be when the show returns on February 14, 2016, he used his always cryptic yet fun descriptions to give us just enough information that we should be very afraid.

The intensity by the end of that episode is not gut-wrenching — it’s gut-swirling and gut-slamming and frappéing.

“It’s quite deadly, sadly. There is some death going on in that but it’s also unbelievably intense. It’s one of the most intense episodes we’ve done. I know we say that a lot — I’ve said that about the premiere episode this year and we had 30,000 walkers. We might not hit those numbers in episode nine but the intensity by the end of that episode is not gut-wrenching — it’s gut-swirling and gut-slamming and frappéing.”

So as always, Scott Gimple, the master of vaguery and misdirection , has given us everything and nothing all at once. Quite deadly could mean lots of Alexandrians that we don’t know. It could mean somebody major in a major way. It could mean just about anything.

Intensity is to be expected at this point. It’s a premiere and the loose ends have our rear ends needing to be scratched. (Sorry for the crudeness, but the Abraham reference begged to be done.)

Gut-frappéing has me very concerned. That leads me to believe that the deadliness won’t be red shirt variety but something major. And the frappé tends to make me think that the effects of the deadliness will have long-term ramifications.

The most concrete piece of information in Mr. Gimple’s answer was the number of walkers. So we do know that the herd is a big threat and the walkers are part of the excitement.

More from Undead Walking

• Walking Dead alum Jayson Warner Smith promotes new film, Chipper, watch it now
• Walking Dead actor Chandler Riggs filming new movie in Tampa Bay
• Why is there no season 12 of The Walking Dead?
• Will Morgan Jones find Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live spinoff?
• Watch Tales of TWD actress Jillian Bell in Prime Video’s Candy Cane Lane

I’m thankful for Mr. Gimple’s vaguery and misdirection. I hate spoilers. I don’t even want to know what happened in the comics, even though that’s hard to avoid finding out sometimes. I love that he gives us everything and nothing. He’s the master of it.

We have 2 months to be massaged in the oils of wonder, speculation, excitement, fear, and curiosity. We’ll absorb every drop of information and sharing we can get from Twitter and Facebook and blogs and wear our T-shirts and do whatever it takes to make it through Walker Withdrawals and spend Valentine’s day on our group Walking Dead date.