The "All Out War" Is Taking A Big Turn In Next Week's 'The Walking Dead'

As The Walking Dead grows closer to what looks like will be an extra-dramatic finale, things are getting pretty exciting. Last week, Rick and Negan finally faced off in an epic shootout, which was big enough. But this week things are really taking off after the Saviors ambushed Alexandrians at the Hilltop to infect them with zombie guts in efforts to finally defeat them and take over their territory. But just when it looked like things couldn't get any more thrilling, the Season 8 Episode 14 promo of The Walking Dead clearly shows that this war is taking a major turn.

In the promo clip for the upcoming episode, Rick and Morgan got into yet another shootout with ravenous walkers on their expedition defeat the Saviors after they attacked (and attempted to conquer) the Hilltop in this week's episode. However, Negan, as we all know, wasn't anywhere in sight. Instead, we saw him tied up and being held captive in a shipping container by Jadis, who saw her whole community wiped out by Negan’s crew in previous episodes. While we've had no shortage of battles up until now, we've rarely seen Negan come out so low in them. And there's not much lower you can get than being tied up in a shipping container.

The clip leaves fans in thirsting anticipation of what's yet to come in the "all out war," and also leaves lingering questions on how Jadis plans to get revenge against the leader of the Saviors. Because you know she's going to.

Things were already intense after tonight's episode.

The back and forth of this season's "all out war" is getting ever more wild, with major character deaths, tragedy, betrayal, the wholesale destruction of Alexandria, and new strategies that are literally reinventing this war from the ground up. A few weeks ago, we discovered that infecting someone with zombie guts work just as well to kill someone as a bite directly from a walker, so Negan planned to use said tactic to ambush Rick's team and take over the Hilltop. (Which he would probably think is an even sweeter revenge now that Rick recently left him to die in a house full of zombies, TBH).

In tonight's episode, the Saviors brought in a whole new weapon — infection. Covering their weapons with walker blood meant that even a minor injury would ultimately be fatal, and not just for the person injured. A plan we learned works really well when we saw a whole room full of people injured in the fight suddenly turn and become zombies.

It's the culmination of a wild few episodes.

Just last week, Rick and Negan finally had a huge showdown after seasons of tension with one another. After an epic, The Fast and the Furious-style car chase that ended after Rick slammed into Negan's car, with a shootout in a random parking lot while a swarm of zombies approached the two. After a wild fight in an abandoned building, it all came to an end after Rick fended off Negan — as well as the flesh-eating monsters — with tiki torches and (barely) escaped through a small opening in the now-burning building. But it wasn't the end for the leader of the Saviors: at the end of the episode, we find him riding in the passenger seat of car, kidnapped by Jadis, probably with the intention of getting revenge for all her murdered Scavengers, whose deaths she blames on Negan.

So with only a few episodes left to go in the season, we're pretty much guaranteed a wild ride. Kidnappings? Check. New weapons and high drama? Check. Hallucinations, prisoner of war moral conundrums, and revenge plots? Check, check, and check. You'd think that there's no way that this show could get any wilder — except, thankfully for all of us, every week it promises us that it can. Here's to a forever wild ride.