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The Walking Dead 7b Includes a Smiling Rick Grimes?

What could Rick Grimes have to smile about? He & his people are now working for Negan and his family is scattered. In the mid-season finale we watched two Alexandrians perish- one by Negan’s own hand, the other by his orders and one is his family taken prisoner. On the flip side we got a taste of Rick Grimes getting the fight back in him. He’s now ready to take on the Saviors and make them pay for what they have done to his family. Scott M. Gimple promises episode nine will have a completely different feel from the first half of the season and will include a twist- “It propels us into a very different half season from the one before it,” says Gimple adding, “before the end of that very first episode back, you will see Rick Grimes smile.”

Mr. Gimple gives us a preview of what we can expect, “The mid-season premiere is a movie unto itself,” says Gimple. “Angela Kang wrote it, Greg Nicotero directed it, the cast knocked it out of the park — pretty much literally, you’ll see — and the crew pulled it all together, and it was a hell of a lot to pull together.”

Executive producer Greg Nicotero explains they “had to burn the place down” before having the group rise up to prepare themselves to fight Negan, and Andrew Lincoln confirms that “the thrill of the fight is back.”

Lincoln also says we can expect “the opposite of what you just witnessed,” in back half of the season seven. “Certainly from Rick’s point of view. You see a man in action again with some of the members of his closest family.”  “There’s a lot more levity, if you can believe that, than you’ve ever seen before in Mr. Grimes,” says Lincoln. “There’s sort of a freedom in him, a feeling that comes from losing everything, and also the thrill of the fight. It’s the thrill of the fight again. He’s back in. All I’m saying is that the band is back together.”  “It’s The Magnificent Seven in the back half. Rather, the magnificent eight episodes. Wait till [episode] 16. I promise you, there is one beat in 16, I dropped my script and started punching the air and did a little jig.”

Hold on tight, The Walking Dead mid-season premiere is February 12th at 9pm EST on AMC.

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