AMC’s “The Walking Dead” started off on a high note during its fifth season premiere on Sunday, October 12. The season premiere saw multiple story arcs finally collide into one explosive episode as the characters fight for their lives against both the living and the undead. Arguably the most popular show of the past few years, the show was sure to come back with a bang – literally and metaphorically.

Each year, the show has broken its own ratings records. This year’s season premiere was no different. It drew 17.3 million viewers overall, 11 million of which fell within advertisers’ target demographic of adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

The show has always walked a fine line between horror, action, suspense, drama, etc. Each season we see some of our favorite characters killed off in the most emotional and horrific ways possible while we also meet new characters to love. The cast and crew alike have been promising that this season’s premiere would raise the bar and push the envelope. Executive producer Gale Anne Hurd told Collider.com that this season is “absolutely heartbreaking, utterly relentless, kick-ass.”

SPOILERS AHEAD

This season will pick up where we left off at the end of last season. We last saw our heroes in Season 4, which found them reunited in the most unlikely of places – a boxcar used as a trap. They had been separated for the latter half of the fourth season after their home (an abandoned prison) was destroyed and overrun by zombies, or “walkers” as the characters in the show refer to them as. Each of the five smaller groups, who at that point had no idea where their loved ones could have escaped to or if they even survived at all, coincidentally discovered different signs posted throughout rural Georgia. Each sign indicated that there is a “sanctuary for all” located in a town called Terminus. Each of the groups decided to make their way to Terminus in the hopes that it would give them shelter from the dangers surrounding them. In the season finale, all but one group – Carol, Tyreese and baby Judith – had made it to Terminus and were reunited. But it was not under the best circumstances. The citizens of Terminus turned out to be not so nice and trapped our heroes in a boxcar – a cliffhanger that fans of the show would have to wait almost seven months to solve.

The fifth season premiere opened with a flashback of the citizens of Terminus locked in the same boxcar that we last saw our heroes in while screams can be heard from outside. We then enter present time as we find our heroes – Rick, Carl, Michonne, Daryl, Maggie, Glenn, Tara, Abraham, Rosita, Eugene, Sasha and Bob – still trapped in the boxcar and creating makeshift weapons out of their clothing accessories and any tools they have handy, locked in the boxcar.

Rick, Daryl, Glenn and Bob are captured after a smoke grenade is dropped into the boxcar and are taken to what seems like a slaughterhouse. After four strangers are gruesomely slaughtered as if they were animals, it is all too obvious that our heroes are facing what may be their scariest, if not greatest, threat to date. Just as Glenn is about to face the same fate as the four strangers before him, gunshots and explosions can be heard from outside.

We then see another flashback that shows Carol, Tyreese and Judith, who have not made it to Terminus yet, traveling along some railroad tracks. After escaping a herd of walkers and coming across a cabin in the forest, they meet a man named Martin, who is revealed to be a citizen of Terminus. They learn about their friends all being captured in Terminus and tie the man up in the cabin. Carol, who has become a ruthless survivor throughout the series, decides to go to Terminus to save their friends while Tyreese, who still struggles with killing others even out of self-defense, stays at the cabin to protect Judith and keep an eye on Martin.

After Carol kills a walker and covers herself in its blood to camouflage herself, preventing walkers from sniffing her out, she travels alongside the herd of walkers the whole way to Terminus. Breaking away from the herd, Carol begins working on rescuing her friends. It turns out that Carol was the one who caused the explosions heard earlier in the episode. As the herd of walkers overruns Terminus, Carol infiltrates Terminus to find her friends. She soon learns that the people of Terminus used to actually be nice people, but they have turned to murder and cannibalism after being attacked by a group that they trusted into their home.

Back at the cabin, Martin, who threatens to kill the baby, attacks Tyreese and Judith. It is a tough spot to be in for Tyreese considering the fact that he has tried so hard to hold on to his humanity by not killing others.

Meanwhile, Rick, Daryl, Glenn and Bob escape the slaughterhouse. They fight through the hordes of walkers and past the militant people of Terminus to release the rest of the group from the boxcar. After using their makeshift weapons to fight their way out of Terminus and escaping into the forest, the group finds relief when they discover that Carol was the one who saved them.

Carol leads them back to the cabin without telling them that Tyreese and Judith are there. Despite the majority of the episode being full of action, the most exciting part of the episode was the reunion that fans have been anticipating since the middle of last season. Tyreese was reunited with his younger sister Sasha while baby Judith was reunited with her father Rick and brother Carl. The reunion was full of emotional impact considering Sasha spent the latter half of last season too afraid to even look for Tyreese out of fear of discovering that he had been killed, plus the fact that Rick and Carl were led to believe that Judith had surely been killed during the fall of the prison. Finally, after being separated for so long and facing one of the most horrific groups they have met, the group was reunited –a feat that seemed impossible.

The episode ends with Rick painting over the signs leading to Terminus. He crosses out the sign and writes “No Sanctuary” before walking off with the group.

After the credits, we are surprised with a bonus scene that shows fan-favorite Morgan, a man not seen since Season 3, finding the sign that Rick painted over.

The fifth season premiere is by far one of the best episodes of “The Walking Dead’ to date. It combined the most horrific moments we have ever seen on the show with some of the most action-packed sequences and most emotional scenes we have seen. The episode had me at the edge of my seat from start to finish. The story succeeded in making us understand the motives of the people of Terminus, even though their actions are despicable. Most shows are unable to do this, while “The Walking Dead” does it consistently. Not only does it make you love the protagonists despite their flaws, it makes you empathize with the antagonists. What other show does that?

I am looking forward to the rest of the season. There are so many directions the story could go. There is talk of a cure being created in Washington, DC. Maggie’s little sister Beth is still missing after being kidnapped last season. Plus, some of the characters still have some unfinished business to deal with such as Rick having banished Carol from the group and Tara having been tricked into assisting in the murder of Maggie and Beth’s father last season.

If one thing is certain, it is that this season will be intense and exciting.

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