The Walking Dead Season 9 Teaser Lays Down The Law

The end of the world is happening again in season nine of The Walking Dead.

Ahead of the release of a full trailer tomorrow, AMC has released a short teaser for the upcoming ninth season of its marquee zombie apocalypse show. Once again, it seems, the humans are the real monsters in this messed-up, death-haunted world. Check out the footage for yourself up above.

The ninth season of the long-running AMC series is reportedly poised to launch "a new chapter of the show", according to new showrunner Angela Kang. The story will explore the survivors lives after a time jump, as they work to set up — and maintain — a new society, with our heroes living tentatively in concert with several other settlements. 

One of the biggest tidbits in this teaser is the reveal of a sign pointing toward Toledo, a reference to the comic book series' Commonwealth — an advanced and more well-developed human stronghold that has yet to be seen on the AMC series. Beyond that, this teaser mostly keeps Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes in the background, focusing more attention on Norman Reedus' Daryl, Danai Gurira's Michonne, and Lauren Cohen's Maggie.

Generally, the teaser shows a look at the new living arrangements for the Walking Dead crew, keeping a burgeoning society going while they try and establish some rules for peoples' conduct, as well as the consequences for breaking them. 

If there's anything we've learned from The Walking Dead so far, it's that people generally look out for each other and most conflicts can be solved nonviolently. Failing that, Daryl can always just punch some other disagreeable longhair in the face until the problems are over. But hey, maybe this is the season where arguments between survivor groups don't boil over into mass carnage and insane murder?

Or, maybe not. One way or another, we know that this is the season in which series star Andrew Lincoln will officially be departing the show for good. If that crisp new haircut he's sporting indicates anything, it's that the actor is clearly already looking forward to his next, pre-apocalyptic project, verisimilitude be damned. (Either that, or the safe zone's got a heck of a barber holed up somewhere.)

The full trailer for The Walking Dead season nine will be out tomorrow, being released during or after the series' panel at San Diego Comic-Con between 12:15 and 1:15 PT.