Life for Rick Grimes is going to get "The Walking Dead" before it gets better. But you know you can't keep a good Ricktator down forever. There is light at the end of the tunnel. And that light is an all-out war.

TWD Season 7 starts October 23, picking up from the nightmare of the Season 6 finale. All kinds of bad stuff is ahead toward the start of the season, but we should also pick up glimmers of hope -- starting with some of the new folks our team will meet along the way.

Vulture recently asked actor Andrew Lincoln what he likes most about Robert Kirkman's comic book series, which is still the main source material for the AMC show. Lincoln's answer hints to some of the new faces ahead in Season 7, including King Ezekiel at the Kingdom, plus Negan's group of Saviors at the Sanctuary:

"From the comic books, the thing I really liked is that the world expands and you meet all these different communities. And each community is different -- they're benevolent, they're oppressive -- but they're described by the leader and how they set up their own philosophies and ideology. [...] And so you have these collisions of ideas and peoples and the world just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and cooler and more exciting. And if we follow the comic book, then there's a super badass conflict between Negan and us, and I think that's certainly something that I think will trump anything we've attempted before in the show."

What does he mean by that super badass conflict?

*Comic book spoilers ahead*

He definitely means All Out War. The epic storyline, covered in two volumes of the comic, covers the war between Negan & The Saviors vs.vRick & his militia, including Alexandria, Hilltop, and the Kingdom. For once, it probably isn't just hyperbolic hype to think that conflict will trump anything they've attempted on the show thus far. All Out War should be epic to the extreme. But will we see it in Season 7? Probably not. The show is now filming the second half, and it sounds like the pieces will just be put together this season, for larger conflict later in Season 8. Maybe even continuing into Season 9?

None of that will ease the pain of the cliffhanger reveal, which is set to break hearts (and potentially frustrate fans even further) when Season 7 begins Sunday, October 23 at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.

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