The season 9 midseason finale of AMC's The Walking Dead ended with what I found to be one of the coolest sequences in the history of the show, as a new group of human villains revealed themselves during a confrontation in a fog-enshrouded cemetery. These villains, who move among the zombies by wearing the skin of the dead – the Leatherface approach to surviving the zombie apocalypse – are called the Whisperers, and there are more of them on display in the trailer for the midseason premiere.
While we only get to see the leader of the Whisperers, a woman called Alpha and played by Samantha Morton, from behind and from a distance, we do see a good number of her followers, including her right hand man Beta, who's played by Ryan Hurst from Sons of Anarchy and Bates Motel. Hurst's Bates character Chick was one of my favorite things about the last couple seasons of that show, so I'm excited to see what he's going to bring to The Walking Dead.
There's also a glimpse of a mysterious cowboy I'm pretty sure is being played by Angus Sampson from the INSIDIOUS movies.
Less interesting to me than the sight of the Whisperers is a shot of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) returning to his former home the Sanctuary, Lucille in hand. The "Negan as big bad" story was already stretched out for way too long on this show, so I don't need any more of that.
I do like the shot of Michonne (Danai Gurira) in which she's sporting her old hairstyle, implying that we're going to be seeing a flashback that might fill in the blanks of what happened during the six years between episode 5 and episode 6 that has everyone acting really strange around each other.
The story of Negan and the Saviors ran The Walking Dead into the ground for a while and I haven't been happy about the recent exits of some important characters, but I have hope that the arrival of the Whisperers is going to make the second half of season 9 more entertaining than the show has been for a while. That story got off to a great start with what went on in that midseason finale.
The Walking Dead season 9 resumes on February 10th.