The title has leaked for the Season 4 premiere of The Walking Dead, raising intriguing questions about how, and when, viewers will find the newly expanded group of survivors when the AMC drama returns in October. Warning: Potential spoilers follow.
According to TVLine, the season begins with an episode written by new showrunner Scott Gimple called “30 Days Without an Accident,” suggesting the story picks up at least a month after the Governor”s assault on the Prison and the merger with the remaining residents of Woodbury. A leap forward in time certainly isn”t unheard of, as the Season 3 premiere rejoined Rick and the other weary survivors several months after their fiery escape from Hershel”s farm.
The title would also point to a period of relative peace, one without deaths by the ever-present walkers or by the Governor, who”s undoubtedly still dangerous, even without the majority of his followers (he massacred many of them, while an unknown number accepted an offer of refuge from the Prison group). How long before the master manipulator assembles a new army?
Any sense of safety Rick & Co. may have is surely short-lived, as Executive Producer Greg Nicotero, who directed the Season 4 premiere, recently teased, “In the first episode this season, one of the guys in my crew was like, ‘You did every gag that you ever did in three years of The Walking Dead in one episode.” We had walkers. We had mummified corpses. We had puppets. We had zombie bites …”
Perhaps, then, they”ll name the second episode of the season “0 Days Without an Accident.”