The first half of The Walking Dead's fifth season ended on a shocking note. Suffice to say, things are usually pretty bad for the show's survivors, so the fact that the mid-season finale ended on such a terrible event is truly saying something. Fans were reeling following the episode - however, there was no way to see the fallout of what went down, as the show went on break immediately following the episode, back at the end of November.

With less than a week before The Walking Dead returns to TV, fans of the series are just as ravenous for its return as the show's shuffling corpses. AMC has been teasing viewers with trailers and short clips for weeks now, and while they've been great, there hasn't been an uncut look at the episode just yet.

That changes today: AMC has just released the first two minutes of The Walking Dead's return, and it's about as melancholy as it gets.
Warning: there are potential spoilers for the show's mid-season finale - watch with care.

While it's a shame that most of the two minutes are spent looking back at the mid-season finale, at least The Walking Dead makes it interesting. There's no bitter monologue, no generic recap of events: it's still entirely possible to put the pieces together as to what happened, but The Walking Dead turned what could have been needless fluff into an intriguing summation of what's going on.

There's a lot going on, that much is true - but the show's penchant for tension is on display here, even in a short, two-minute recap. It likely won't make sense to fans who aren't caught up quite yet, but for the millions of people who have been waiting for months, it's a great tease for next's week's return.

The Walking Dead's mid-season premiere will air Feb. 8 on AMC.