After a six month hiatus, The Walking Dead is back for its seventh season on AMC. The seventh season premiere was the most-anticipated season premiere of the fall season, receiving a whopping 17 million views on its first run on Sunday, October 23rd at its regularly scheduled time of 9 PM. With one of the most tragic and nail-biting episodes of the series since its premiere in October 2010, this episode is one for the history books.

Before I go any further, let me just say: I called it. When the show wrapped up its sixth season back in April, we were introduced to the newest, biggest, and baddest antagonist that The Walking Dead has ever encountered: Negan. Wielding a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire – something Negan calls Lucille – this dastardly, charmingly evil man played a twisted game of eeny-meeny-miny-moe to see whom he would kill at random with the help of Lucille. That season, ending on a cliffhanger, left us on the edge, wondering who met their ultimate demise. Fans of the show took to social media to voice their enraged opinions, calling it a cheap move done by the creators and producers in order to milk as much money as they can from the franchise.

When the show returned this month, writers answered those lingering thoughts and finally put to rest who died at the hands of Negan. The shocking truth? It was not one, but two characters!

Abraham Ford, played by Michael Cudlitz, the former U.S. Army Sergeant from Houston, Texas turned zombie apocalypse survivor who joined the show in season 4, and Glenn Rhee, the kindhearted former pizza delivery boy from Atlanta, Georgia who was introduced in the second episode of season one back in 2010 and who eventually turned into one of Rick Grimes’ right-hand men for the duration of the seasons, turned out to be the victims.

My initial thoughts when I saw the deaths on-screen was, in all honesty, absolutely nothing. Throughout the years of watching this show, I have become attached to these characters, specifically Glenn, and to see them get booted off the show in such a horrifying manner was just too much for me to bear. I’d have to give it to the special effects makeup artist of the show, Greg Nicotero, because he created prosthetic heads to show the damage that Lucille did to them, and it was realistic and gory, something that The Walking Dead is known for. Salute to him for having viewers in their living rooms run to the bathrooms because of what they just witnessed on television.

I also have to give a salute to the cast of the show as well, because in this traumatic episode, not only for the viewers but for the characters in the show as well, you could really feel their emotions on-screen, particularly the main protagonist of the show, Rick Grimes, who is played by Andrew Lincoln. Rick, who is told by Negan to chop off his own son’s arm using an ax or else the rest of his group will get executed in front of him, has a very strong mental/emotional breakdown on screen, something not many actors can do nowadays.

His breakdown in the scene was so intense that Lincoln even had snot coming out of his character’s nose because of how much he was crying, begging for his son’s life as well as his group’s lives. That performance truly was worthy of an Emmy.

The show’s future is looking bright in terms of the entertainment and quality factor, however, it is looking very grim for the characters on the show as the threat of big, bad wolf villain Negan looms over them.

The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights at 9 PM on AMC.