AMC served up a provocative Super Bowl teaser for the second half of season seven of “The Walking Dead.”
The 15-second spot depicted a football laying on AstroTurf with the sound of crickets in the background. After a few seconds, a baseball bat wrapped with barb wire came crashing down on the football.
The baseball bat was a reference to the deadly weapon wielded by Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan character in the seventh-season opener of the zombie drama series that aired on October. The second half of the season seven bows Feb. 12.
AMC and “Walking Dead” producers faced harsh criticism even from fans for the level of violence in the season opener. Exec producer Gale Anne Hurd last month acknowledged that the backlash from fans to the brutal deaths of two characters prompted some adjustments in the level of violence depicted in later episodes.
The remaining seven episodes will focus on the response to Negan’s brutality by Andrew Lincoln’s Rick and others.
Per the description offered by AMC: “Rick’s group will find out yet again that the world isn’t what they thought it was. It’s much bigger than anything they’ve seen so far. While they have a singular purpose – to defeat Negan – it won’t come easy. More importantly, victory will require more than Alexandria. They need the numbers of the Kingdom and the Hilltop, but, similar to how Rick felt, Ezekiel (KharyPayton) and Gregory (Xander Berkeley) do not want bloodshed. To convince them otherwise will take more than speeches. The lengths Rick and the group will have to go to in order to find weapons, food and new fighters is nothing short of remarkable.”
