A lot happened on last night’s premiere of The Walking Dead season 5. Let’s discuss a few fun aspects of “No Sanctuary”!
Morgan
The old friend of Rick, pictured above, actually made an appearance at the very end of last night’s Walking Dead season 5 premiere. If you didn’t see it mentioned in the recaps on your favorite television sites, it’s because this scene was not included on screeners sent to the media.
The scene depicts Morgan walking down the train tracks, making his way to Terminus. This isn’t good news for Morgan. Will he encounter Gareth? Will he join Gareth, who is clearly in need of a lot of help right now? Will he turn away from Terminus and bump into Rick again in another couple of seasons?
Regardless, we’d love to see him appear on a more regular basis, and that appears to be in the pipeline. In an interview with EW, showrunner Robert Kirkman says that we’ll see Morgan again in the future.
“He’s actually on [Rick’s] trail, and the Terminus thing is helping him hopefully stay on that trail,” he said, “And it’s certainly a question as to whether he’ll meet up with them, or when he’ll meet up with them, but we’ve got a lot of big plans for the character of Morgan, so stay tuned.”
“Large Man”
Remember the guy who Rick freed from captivity who looked like Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway? That man is actually the same person who turned Terminus into the dreadful place it is today. He’s the person who turned Gareth’s sanctuary into a living hell. “Them being willing to take people in, it was the biggest mistake they made and it turned them,” Dead’s Greg Nicotero told THR. “That’s a big theme on the show because it shows how you can start out as a good person and with a few flips of the switch, be not such a good person.”
Despite his importance as someone who ruined Terminus, Nicotero says you won’t be seeing “Large Man” anymore.
The brilliance of “Large Man” is that Glenn wanted them to free whoever was in that container because they are still good people who help others. The only problem was that they helped the worse possible person.
Gore mania
Viewers couldn’t help but notice that the Walking Dead season 5 premiere had a huge amount of gore. It was particularly shocking to see people’s throats slit right at the start of the episode.
Even the showrunners didn’t think that scene would make it to air.
Said Kirkman in the aforementioned EW interview, “That opening scene with the throat slits, I was standing next to [director] Greg Nicotero on set at one point and he just leaned over and was like, ‘There’s no way this is getting on TV.’ But yeah, I mean I really have to hand it to AMC. They really do allow us to do what we think is necessary, and I think that you know as startling and as horrifying as some of the things that we do on the show are, I think people recognize that they also come from a place of character, and it’s always in the interest of telling the best story.”
By the way: According to last night’s episode of The Talking Dead, Rick and Carol encountered the victim pictured above during season 4. (Thanks to Robbie in the comments of our recap)
What stood out to you in ‘The Walking Dead’ season 5 premiere?
In our recap article readers were talking most about Carol. Not only did she help resolve the situation at Terminus, she also reunited Rick and Sasha with Judith and Tyreese. It was an episode filled with many emotional moments.
The Walking Dead season 5 continues this Sunday at 9 p.m. eastern/pacific on AMC.