The Walking Dead Reveals Surprising Danger from Space in Season 10 Premiere

The first image from The Walking Dead Season 10, released in July ahead of the trailer premiered at San Diego Comic-Con, showed Michonne (Danai Gurira) cutting down walkers to the backdrop of a forest fire. The Season 10 trailer and subsequent first-look images showed Daryl (Norman Reedus), Cyndie (Sydney Park) and Alden (Callan McAuliffe) fending off walkers among those same flames — and a behind-the-scenes video hints that fire is sparked by an object that is, literally, out of this world.

In footage captured during a cast table read of the Season 10 premiere — a bonus feature available exclusively to AMC Premiere subscribers, who can view season opener “Lines We Cross” one week before it airs on AMC — we see Siddiq actor Avi Nash sat in front of concept art showing a blazing forest fire. Above those are prominent images of a satellite, which matches this foreign object — now crash landed on Earth — seen behind Daryl and Cyndie:

What role the satellite plays beyond igniting the forest fire — if it plays a role at all, besides sparking what is a major problem for our survivors — remains to be seen.

“One of the things that we have going on this season is, we’re continuing some explorations of natural elements and how they play into our world,” The Walking Dead showrunner Angela Kang previously told EW. “And fire is one of those elements that comes into play in a few key ways that twist the story in a way that will be pretty exciting.”

While fire is “terrifying” enough in the modern world, such a danger “obviously has very different implications for our people in an apocalyptic world.”

“I don’t want to give too much away about this particular story because hopefully there’s some unexpected aspects to it,” Kang teased. “But we will definitely see our people trying to contend with things that they can’t handle in the same ways that we do in our world now.”

When previewing the new season’s non-human threats at San Diego Comic-Con, Kang hinted at other environmental obstacles following last season’s finale that pit the survivors against a particularly harsh blizzard.

“The snow episode last year, that was something that we had such a great time doing,” Kang said. “We had wanted to do snow for years, so it was a great undertaking. We’re still exploring other kinds of environmental obstacles that we haven’t done and seen before, so there will be some other new stuff to look out for.”

The Walking Dead Season 10 premieres Sunday, Oct. 6 at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD Season 10 intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.