New 'The Walking Dead' Mid-Season 9 Trailer Is Missing Something Very Important

The Walking Dead has just aired the mid-season finale for season 9, and it ended with the emergence of a terrifying new enemy, and the shocking death of a close ally. We also got the obligatory new Walking Dead season 9B preview trailer, and fans quickly noticed that production on the second half of season 9 isn't quite as far along as it may have initially seemed.

Notice anything missing from this image?

That's right! Carol and the warriors of The Kingdom have apparently learned a form of bow and arrow combat that doesn't require actual arrows! Amazing what you can learn in a six-year time jump!

In all seriousness: This shot taken at :33 in the Walking Dead 9B trailer shows Carol and Co. drawing back bows that have no arrows in them. What's pretty ironic is that literally a second before this in the trailer (and presumably the show itself), Carol is seen clearly getting into this firing line position, with an actual arrow loaded and ready in her bow.

So what's the deal with the appearing/disappearing arrows in this Walking Dead trailer?

As a lot of fans were pretty quick to surmise, this is almost certainly another case of post-production work and promotional work butting heads. The Walking Dead creative team likely still needs time to complete all of the visual effects work needed to create big battle sequences later in the season; however, they also need to hype the season, and thought they could probably get away with cutting a few corners with the editing. Not so: in the age of tireless fan scrutiny, when any visual moment can (and does) get saved in a screenshot, fans were bound to notice a glaring shortcoming like this.

There's also something we can learn from a technical standpoint: the reason why we see Carol drawing back a real arrow when moving into the firing line, but see nothing when the Kingdom warriors are set to fire, is because that's the nature of action filmmaking. Shots of the characters actually firing their arrows and hitting various targets will no doubt be completed with CGI, so that the actors don't have to be actual marksmen in order to pull off the scene.

The Walking Dead returns for the second half of Season 9 on February 10, 2019. Fear the Walking Dead will return for season 5 later in 2019. For recaps and discussion, watch ComicBook.com's After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes.