The Walking Dead midseason premiere has received a content descriptor containing “SVL,” indicating the episode airing Feb. 23 contains sexual situations, violence, and course or crude language. The TV-MA series is typically rated “V” or “VL” and has rarely included sexual content requiring the “sexual situations” advisory. The Season 10 midseason premiere, “Squeeze,” is so named after the perilous situation facing Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), Aaron (Ross Marquand), Magna (Nadia Hilker), Jerry (Cooper Andrews), and sisters Kelly (Angel Theory) and Connie (Lauren Ridloff), who were led into a trap sprung by Whisperer leader Alpha (Samantha Morton) leaving the survivors surrounded by a horde of zombies.
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Elsewhere, a wanted Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is thrust into treacherous territory when Alpha and Beta (Ryan Hurst) get closer to sniffing out the Whisperer spy supplying the enemy Alexandria community with inside information, including the location of the Whisperers’ walker horde. This was secretly provided to Aaron by Gamma (Thora Birch), Alpha’s acolyte whose loyalties unraveled after learning Alpha lied about killing disowned daughter Lydia (Cassady McClincy).
“In the mid-season premiere, our group must figure out how to get out of a precarious situation,” reads the official synopsis for “Squeeze” earlier revealed by ComicBook.com. In “Stalker,” airing March 1, “Our group must defend Alexandria from a threatening, outside force.”
Showrunner Angela Kang previously noted the war between the survivors and the Whisperers will escalate “very, very fast” following a discovery Alpha sent Whisperer spy Dante (Juan Javier Cardenas) to infiltrate Alexandria, left especially vulnerable by the death of medic Siddiq (Avi Nash).
“We’ve trapped a bunch of people in a cave full of walkers, so we have to tell that story. So, that’s definitely going to be a big part of when we pick back up,” Kang told Entertainment Weekly. “Obviously, we have Negan embedded with the Whisperers, so we’ll continue to kind of tell the story that’s involved there. And then, not necessarily specific to the episode back, but just as a whole, at this point now some lines have been crossed, right? The border has been crossed by both sides. There have been these acts of war and so things are now escalating very, very fast. And we kind of get to the big conflict between the Whisperers and our people.”
As for the Whisperers’ newest member — who will receive his own fleshy mask sometime in the second half of the season — Morgan promises Negan aligning with Alpha flips the show “on its ass.”
“This year has been a lot about playing off of paranoia and what side are people on, and I think Negan and Alpha together are a formidable twosome,” Morgan teased on Talking Dead following the Season 10 midseason finale. “It’s bad news for our heroes. And what it means for the show is we’re gonna flip it on its ass.”
TWD Season 10 returns with new episodes Sunday, Feb. 23 at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
