【Kairaku Jigoku no Toriko (2019)】

This post contains spoilers for The Kairaku Jigoku no Toriko (2019)Walking Dead Season 7 premiere, titled "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be."

The devastating Walking Dead Season 7 premiere left two beloved characters with their skulls bashed in and Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) pledging his allegiance to a sadistic murderer with a baseball bat fetish -- and the show's producers are feeling pretty good about it all.

During this week's Talking Deadaftershow, executive producer Scott Gimple admitted that their goal wasn't just to break Rick Grimes in the premiere, but to break everyone watching at home, too.

"The hardest thing about it was, starting the script, what would break Rick? And then taking it further," he explained. "It was all in the book, in issue 100, but [we were] looking for a way to break the audience too. Not in a way that is in any way to hurt them, but for them to believe that Rick Grimes would be under the thumb of Negan; that he would go through an experience that would do that to him; and that the audience would go through the experience too, so they would believe that Rick would do what this guy says."

That was accomplished by Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) first murdering Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), and then, in retaliation for an act of aggression from Daryl (Norman Reedus), subsequently beating Glenn (Steven Yeun) to death as well.

Reedus admitted that his character "totally feels guilt," for Glenn's death, since Negan kills Glenn as payback for Daryl trying to attack him, when he was otherwise prepared to settle with only dispatching one member of Rick's group.

"The weight of that is so heavy on him at that point – he'll never let that guilt [go]," Reedus said.

Creator Robert Kirkman said that the brutal episode and those two pivotal deaths were designed "to set the stage in a way of saying that this show, this story isn't going anywhere. We still have a lot more to do; we're setting the stage for a lot more to come," he explained.

"There's so much that comes out of this scene that has to be resolved. We feel like after as many years we’ve been doing this, we wanted to send a clear message that we’re just getting started. There is a lot that's going to be coming from this."

Glenn's final words to Maggie (Lauren Cohan) were "I will find you," and Cohan offered her interpretation of those words during the Talking Dead, growing visibly emotional at Maggie's loss. "I feel like, in this life or the next, they're star-crossed lovers... time or place doesn't erase that," she said. "I'll find you: I'll be with you, I'll watch over you, I'll watch over the baby, I'll be there."

Yeun revealed that he was actually rooting for Glenn to have the same death as he had in the comic, because, "Robert wrote such a messed up -- but at the same time incredible -- way to take something away to make a story as impactful as it is. When you read the comic, you kind of don’t want that to go to anyone else. It’s such an iconic moment -- I think I even said 'don’t give that to anybody else.'"

As for keeping his on-screen death secret for the past year, Yeun admitted, "It was fun to lie to people, but after a while you just can't lie anymore, so I just stopped talking to people."

Cudlitz was equally at peace with Abraham's demise, especially because he went out protecting the people he loved.

"For anyone who follows the graphic novel, he's on borrowed time. Denise took his death, gracefully, graciously, two episodes prior," he pointed out. "So I think at that point I knew I had gone beyond where he was in the graphic novel. I knew that Mr. Kirkman had always said he was not happy with how he took Abraham out in the graphic novel, so I was curious to see where we'd go from there. In the group, he made it very clear to Negan that if he were going to take somebody, 'take me, if it’s going to help protect the rest of the group.'"

After the devastating events of the season premiere, Gimple previewed that the second episode of Season 7 is going to be very different. "It's funny; it's actually funnyafter the episode you just saw," he promised.

"There's a tiger, there is King Ezekiel, and there begins a season where we see all these different worlds; all these different characters. And we see these characters, that remain, trying to put together the pieces, trying to go on."

In a newly released sneak peek at episode 702, titled "The Well," we see Morgan (Lennie James) and Carol (Melissa McBride) exploring the settlement known as The Kingdom, home to a leader named King Ezekiel -- a revelation that Carol greets with an understandable amount of skepticism.

In a recent interview with Mashable, executive producer Greg Nicotero revealed that having the two characters separated from the main group would allow for a different tone -- a welcome relief after the misery of the premiere: "Having Carol and Morgan not be in the direct line of fire certainly provides a little opportunity to take a breath and visit with characters that we love."

Phew?

The Walking Deadairs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.