Fans are still reeling in from last night’s episode of The Walking Dead, “The Calm Before.” The long-awaited pike scene was finally shown with the decapitated heads of ten people from different communities. Amongst few of those dead at the hands of the Whisperers are Tara (Alanna Masterson), Hilltop’s leader, Henry (Matt Lintz), Carol and Ezekiel’s son, and Enid (Katelyn Nacon), Hilltop’s doctor. Although the pike scene was initially meant to be in the season finale, showrunner Angela Kang wanted to change things up by showing the aftermath of the losses.

Winter is coming in the season finale of The Walking Dead. For the first time on the show, we’ll see how our survivors will handle the winter storm and Alpha’s (Samantha Morton) territory.

“I’m dying for people to see it. For me, it was one of the most technically challenging things I have ever done in my career as a director and as an effects artist who has to visualize this world,” said director Greg Nicotero. “The other big challenge is this: How do you follow something like episode 15 with a season finale? While we were shooting it, we all said that episode 15 felt like a season finale. It was a moment where you want to end the show with people reeling and recovering. Adding a little P.S. on it, with the magnitude of what we did? I think people are going to be blown away.”

Before heading into season 10 in the fall, some storylines will come to a close while others begin.

“There’s a lot of good emotion and stories that are wrapped up with some character development and arcs,” said Nicotero. “There are other stories we’re setting up. It has a lot of mood to it. It has a lot of style to it. It feels, unlike any other episode we have ever produced. In that way, I think we’re going to have our audience saying, ‘Man, they keep giving us more and more stuff that makes us want to stay tuned. It makes us want to know what’s going to happen next.’ As soon as I was told we were going to do snow? I was like, ‘Wow. It’s Georgia. How do we do snow in Georgia?’ We’ll talk about the answer after you see the episode.”

Catch the season nine finale on March 31 at 9/8c on AMC.

Photo credit for Raymond Flotat.