Oh, so this is why Rick was smiling at the end of the mid-season premiere of “Walking Dead”

The mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead ended with Rick smiling, which, yo, alert the media. Not only is it pretty monumental for Rick to smile period, but also, let’s take a second to think about what The Walking Dead generally entails. On top of being about a bunch of undead zombies trying to eat everybody, there’s also a lot of death on top of that — out of all the shows on television, we worry about everybody on The Walking Dead more than any other, so smiles aren’t just rare on the show. Much as we love it, WE rarely end the show with a smile, so post-premiere we were looking for answers.

Thankfully, Entertainment Weekly was there for us and spoke to producer and director Greg Nicotero about the episode, and he had answers.

For much of the episode, Rick is preoccupied with putting together an army, so it makes sense that at the end, when they’re surrounded by this mysterious new group, Nicotero points out that Rick isn’t necessarily seeing the people or the situation…he’s seeing potential for reaching the goal he’d been aiming for throughout the episode.

"Rick sees soldiers. That’s why he smiles. I don’t think he’s worried for a second. I think he looks, and he’s like, okay, I need a win here, and there are a lot of people here, and they have weapons, and this is what I need. So the gears are clicking. The gears start turning, and then, boom, we’re out."

We hope that this plan goes well for Rick, but since as we said, we expect very little by way of “things working out” from The Walking Dead, so we’re not holding our breath.

Filed Under