Decoding the New 'The Walking Dead' Season 6 Image: Does Alexandria Survive?

Warning: This post contains The Walking Dead Season 6 spoilers.

AMC has released key art for the second half of The Walking Dead’s sixth season, and if that midseason finale cliffhanger didn’t have you worried for the survival of Alexandria and its residents… get worried.

When we left Rick Grimes and friends, the zombie horde that had been milling around outside Alexandria had broken through the walls surrounding the town, swarming Rick and friends, as well as the mostly ill-prepared residents who aren’t a member of the Grimes group.

Tough Alexandria leader and co-founder Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) was bitten while trying to flee to safety, and later died inside one of the houses in town. Glenn and Enid saw the invasion and plotted a way to reunite with the group. Meanwhile, Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham were interrupted on their road trip home by a group of men who claimed their truck in the name of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the big baddie of TWD comics who will be officially making his debut on the series no later than the Season 6 finale.

Related: Take a Bite Out of Our ‘Walking Dead’ Recaps

As for Rick, Carl, Judith, Michonne, Jessie, Sam, Ron, and Father Gabriel, they covered themselves in walker guts and joined hands to try to sneak through the zombie crowd and to the supply house for weapons, and the plan might have worked… until a frightened Sam called out for his mom, alerting the walkers that there was a potential feast among them.

And that’s where the episode, “Start to Finish,” ended.

A hint about the Feb. 14 midseason premiere comes in that episode’s title: “No Way Out.” We’ll pick up with the situation in Alexandria right where we left off, and, breaking down the individual sections of the above key art, we get even more teases (and questions) about what to expect in Season 6.5:

Morgan on a Horse

Remember Rick’s famous horse ride into Atlanta in Season 1? Here’s hoping for better longevity for Morgan’s equine, but two takeaways from the photo: One, yay, Morgan survived the walker overrun at Alexandria and his violent showdown with Carol in “Start to Finish.” But now he’s outside the town on his horse, and appears to be without any other members of the group. Did he flee voluntarily? Is he on a supply/scouting mission? Or, as was Carol’s wish, has he been banished from Rick’s group after hiding the injured Wolf who kidnapped Denise in the midseason finale?

Is That a Satellite Dish?

Or an old amusement park ride? We can’t tell, but the fact that either one could factor into the storyline has us dying to know which it is.

Rick’s Face

It’s battered and scarred, and looks like it’s split in two. Not a surprise… Rick had almost allowed himself to believe his friends and family could possibly create a safe new community in Alexandria, and the events of “Start to Finish,” plus all the doom and gloom ahead, aren’t going to do anything to squash his more Ricktatorship-ish tendencies.

The RV

RV… Dale… memories. But is that the RV Rick was using earlier in the season, the one he was in when he was attacked by — and quite handily disposed of — the Wolves Morgan had allowed to flee after their attack on Alexandria? We’re only seeing the passenger side in the photo, which is a shame, because the driver side, which is now full of the holes Rick shot through it to kill the Wolves, would identify it for sure. We do see that the RV is being followed by a truck… Is this a convoy of Alexandrians searching for a new home? Or are these vehicles now in the possession of a group we have yet to meet? Perhaps a group led by the aforementioned Negan?

The Rising Smoke

Again, this one brings back memories of another time, namely the smoke that arose from Terminus and led to Carol making her most kickass move yet in saving her friends from Gareth and his fellow cannibals. We know Gareth and company are very, very dead… but there’s never going to be a lack of other menacing groups to keep post-apocalyptic life completely terrifying, and it’s a good bet one of those groups is responsible for this billowing smokiness.

Hands Across Alexandria

Whose hand is holding that rosary? Maggie? And the hand wearing a wedding ring, in the portion of the photo that also shows a woman’s neck with a small necklace around it… that’s a by-now-zombified Deanna, right? There’s also what appears to be a walker handcuffed to something, and another set of hands — living humans — holding each other. Without getting too spoilerific for those series viewers who haven’t read the comics, let’s just say that some major events from Robert Kirkman’s comics are very likely to play out in the midseason premiere, and they are shocking, gruesome, heartbreaking, and game-changing. And they involve hands.

The Walking Dead showrunner Scott M. Gimple offered this extra little tidbit about the collage of pics: “This image gives a look at tiny pieces of a larger world our group is about to discover. In the new world, they’ll find hope, possibility, tragedy, and the terrifying cost of change.”

Related: ‘The Walking Dead’ Showrunner Talks Deanna, the New Carl, and the Negan We’ll Meet on the Series

Meanwhile, midseason finale events and Gimple’s talk of a “new world” aside, we shouldn’t totally write off Alexandria just yet. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, TWD creator Kirkman says of the last half of the season, “It comes back to those plans of rebuilding Alexandria. Assuming some people survive, and it’s a good bet that some do because they’ve already talked in the midseason finale that they’re not planning on leaving Alexandria. It’s a bump in the road, but there’s something special there, and they can turn this into an anchor that they can build upon. They actually have a chance at surviving long term and building a safe place, not going from safety to safety to safety the way they have for the life of the show. This isn’t the prison, and, ‘Oh, we gotta move on from here and find another place.’ This is something different. And from there, there will be other things that expand their world in new and terrifying ways.”

The Walking Dead returns Feb. 14 at 9 p.m. on AMC.