The Walking Dead wrapped up its first half of season two this week with a literal bang. Read all about the shocking concluding few minutes in this review of "Pretty Much Dead Already."

How will these events impact the show's return, which takes place on February 12, 2012?

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, creator Robert Kirkman that "people are going to be pitted against each other now" and expounds on what viewers can expect:

"Shane isn’t going to suddenly calm down... he was pretty angry there at the end of this episode. He was probably a little shocked by Sophia coming out of the barn but I wouldn’t expect him to put his gun down and be like, “Okay, well, I’m good now.” So there’s going to be tremendous amounts of conflict that comes from that and there’s going to be a lot of aftermath dealing with the shocking revelation and there’s going to be a lot of crazy new stuff thrown into the mix.

"I think we’re going to see some new characters very early on, introduced in our first episode back. There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff coming up."

We have no doubt. Check out a scene - one that highlights the aforementioned conflict - from the first episode back now: