Andrew Lincoln will give us his last year as Rick, but the new trailer from SDCC makes it look good. The cast and crew of The Walking Dead have arrived at this year’s SDCC with some good news and some sad news. The good news is we have season 9 to look forward to, premiering on October 7th, but the bad news is Rick won’t be coming back after. Watch the trailer and then we’ll get into the serious stuff.

Ok, we have a lot to say about this because season 9 looks like it might be getting back to what made The Walking Dead great. We start off with a little Rick/Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) off where the two exchange words like they’ve done for the past two seasons. Negan’s words and the rest of the trailer appear to have some truth to them, though. We are also looking at a time jump because Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) baby is born and Judith is a little girl. If we had to guess, they’re moving ahead 2 years, it’s hard to tell because Judith is much bigger and the baby isn’t a year, by the images.

Since Negan’s fall, it appears Rick has been trying to unify the different groups and it isn’t going well by the look of things in the trailer. Maggie wants to take charge, and Daryl (Norman Reedus) wants things back like they were in the beginning. Speaking of Daryl, we saw a little moment between he and Carol (Melissa McBride) that should have fans -who shipped them in the early years- very excited.

What’s the best part of the season 9 trailer, getting us hype for what’s to come? Two things: Michonne (Danai Gurira) wielding her katana again, and the walkers. This is the first time, in many years, that it looks like the walkers might pose a real threat again, instead of being background drama. We love every element of this SDCC reveal that gives us hope of an intense season of The Walking Dead, and maybe a way to make everyone love Negan like we do.