Robert Kirkman says The Walking Dead season 5 is going to enter an interesting place when it returns this October.

Speaking from the set of the new episodes, which are currently filming in Atlanta, Georgia, the comic creator and executive producer told EW that season 5 will be “different and crazy and exciting.”

“You feel like you never left,” says Kirkman of returning to set. “Everyone’s happy to be back together, so it’s been pretty great and everybody’s bringing their A game still, 5 years in. We’re doing new and different and crazy and exciting things and now I think the atmosphere is that we can’t wait until we can start sharing things with people and start showing things to people because we’re really excited about what we’re doing here. We think we’re making another magical season.”

Of the different (slower) pace in the back half of The Walking Dead season 4, Kirkman explained that the show is at its best when it’s turning the amount of action up and down.

“I think this show works best with a cycle or ramping up and ramping down,” he said, “and lulling people into a sense of security and speeding things up and keeping them on guard. I will say that we definitely start this season in an up cycle, whereas last season we definitely started the season in a down cycle. So we’re certainly changing things up in that respect and we’re gonna kind of hit the ground running this season.”

While we didn’t mind the slow-ness of season 4, we’re hoping that Kirkman’s words about more action are accurate. Rick and company have to kick Terminus’ ass to learn the truth about the compound.

AMC released a photo of Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln) in season 5 last week. It depicts the lead character peeking out of the train car he’s being held in with his friends at Terminus.