‘The Walking Dead’ Season 4 Trailer: What Secrets Are Revealed in the New Footage?

We open the season 4 trailer on Daryl and Sasha leading a supply run into a nearby Big Spot (free advertisement, come loot us when we’re all dead!), which quickly seems to go awry as new series regular Bob Stookey (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) stands guard outside. Goodbye, other redshirts!

Worth noting is that survivors of the comic book once raided a Wal-Mart on their way back from stocking up against the Governor, in which Maggie picked up two cribs for both Lori and herself. The merry raid was soon interrupted but the arrival of the Governor’s men outside, and a tense stand-off. A clue to Bob’s true allegiance, perhaps?

It seems in the three months since Rick let the Woodbury survivors into the prison, they’ve made considerable modifications to better support a population. Not only have some of the prison fences and gates with repaired with gruesome and makeshift additions, but Hershel and the other survivors seem to have set up a few garden areas, and even livestock pens! Don’t ask us where they got any of those, though.

Even with the many modifications however, it seems the interior or the prison is still susceptible to attack, or at least sabotage. A number of walkers manage to invade and chow down on some red-shirt residents, but the real question remains if someone let them into the prison on purpose! Last season we had the jilted inmate Andrew sabotaging the facility, but who from the inside would commit such brutal acts? Apart from the comics’ own inmate killer, we’ve very little base with which to guess here.

Curiously underplayed throughout the trailer is the sight of Hershel apparently walking on both legs, without the aid of crutches! We’ll presume that friends and family managed to fashion together a prosthetic leg for the former farmer, though admittedly of much sturdier quality than Dale’s peg leg in the books. In reality, we’re guessing a fake leg was simply easier on the budget and actor Scott Wilson.

Plus, goodbye Ricktatorship, hello library committee! Not only that, but from Hershel’s calm tone, we’re guessing the prison attack didn’t cost him any more of his children, as tended to be the case with the books.

Tyreese spends much of the trailer sporting a bruised eye, while we similarly observe the bandages on Rick’s right hand that caused such a stir with purist fans of the books. Considering we also see Tyreese taking a swing at Rick and threatening Daryl, as well as Rick punching someone on the ground, might it be safe to assume the pair share one of their comic book brawls?

Of course, a fight between Rick and Tyreese begs the question of what could have set the other off, as neither the comic daughter Tyreese lost, or his failed relationship with Carol have any real counterparts on AMC. Unless you count his sister Sasha that is, but Sonequa Martin-Green was made series regular for season 4, wasn’t she? Ruh-Roh!

The trailer also gives us multiple looks at new series regular Bob Stookey, whom we’ve been led to believe joined the group approximately a week before the events of season 4 premiere “30 Days Without An Accident.” Here we see Stookey hoping to get in with the group by pulling his weight, particularly with Sasha, while Tyreese disapprovingly looks on, if the editing can be believed. The question remains however, what might the character be hiding, considering his comic backstory and a later shot of his hand shaking, covered with blood?

Much as we saw Carol taking on a more maternal role to take care of baby Judith last year, hear we see Carol stepping up to educate some younger Woodbury survivors in proper knife use, a far more proactive role than anything the come character was allowed. Of course, the close relationship we see between Carol and some of the younger girls we’ve seen in the trailer surely couldn’t lead to any horrible grieving, could it? Say, speaking of which…

Perhaps one of the more mysterious shots of the trailer, we see Tyreese following a trail of blood along the ground to a small courtyard outside the prison, where something apparently shocks him beyond words, and likely informs his mood throughout the rest of the trailer. And hey, what was he doing with those flowers?

If we had to guess, we’d imagine that Tyreese’s discovery relates to either of two similar moments from the books, either where Tyreese discovered his dead daughter Julie and her panicked boyfriend Chris, or where Hershel discovered his young twin daughters brutally murdered in the prison barber shop. Of course, none of those comic characters have AMC counterparts, but we do hear Hershel make mention of “two of our own, killed in cold blood.” Might we see two of Carol’s young students, or perhaps two other dead bodies at the other end of Tyreese’s gaze?

Lending support to the idea of a saboteur within the prison, we see the group struggling to hold up a fence that the walkers have all congregated around and begun to lean on, while Sasha observes that someone appears to have been feeding and drawing the walkers in with dead vermin. This doesn’t pertain to anything from the books that we can remember, bearing more resemblance to Andrew’s saboteur efforts last season. Worth noting however, that both the AMC and comic Governors were among the few to “feed” zombies in order to keep them more docile.

Though edited in such a way to make it seem as if Glenn and Maggie are contemplating leaving the prison on their own, the discussion here between the recently-engaged lovers might well pertain to that day’s supply runs, one of which we glimpsed at the beginning of the trailer. Still, the pair did propose leaving Rick and the others behind on multiple occasions, so we might expect a more series discussion between Glenn and Maggie this season, if not an altogether exit.

As alluded to by Robert Kirkman himself, here we see Michonne examining a map in her mission to finally hunt down and kill the Governor once and for all. Her vendetta with the deposed Woodbury leader seemed a bit baseless last season, but coupled with Andrea’s death, we can expect Michonne to be far more ruthless in pursuing the villain this year.

A tense moment in the trailer features Daryl, Michonne, Bob Stookey and Tyreese all pinned down in a car, with walkers surrounding on every side. Three make a brave effort to fend off the walkers, while it seems Tyreese dejectedly remains behind for a moment, before suicidally attacking the walkers.

Don’t assume that the undead swarming over Tyreese will prove to be the last we see of the character however, as we imagine this scene pays homage to a book sequence in which a grief-fueled Tyreese attacked a group of walkers in the prison’s gym, eventually disappearing beneath the herd. The others were forced to flee, but later reentered the gym to find Tyreese miraculously survived, having taken down every last walker in a rage. Hammer time!

While ‘The Walking Dead’ season 4 trailer wisely kept the Governor out of the footage to preserve the surprise of the character’s return, we couldn’t help but notice Michonne, Daryl, Bob and Tyreese inside what appears to be a school, beset by apparently blind walkers. It can’t be a coincidence that all of the four walkers in pursuit appear to be missing their eyes, so one wonders if the Governor picked up a new hobby in his exile…what do you think?

There isn’t really anything to say about this shot. It’s just awesome.

Saved for the stinger of the trailer (much like Merle was last year), we have to wonder about the significance of Daryl, Michonne, Tyreese and Bob hearing a voice over the car radio promising a “sanctuary.” We’ve seen and heard before the idea of unmanned radio broadcasts for abandoned outposts, but could the scene’s placement at the end of the trailer suggest anything about ‘The Walking Dead’ season 4’s direction?