The Walking Dead 9×15 Photos Showcase Ezekiel’s Fair

The Walking Dead season 9 is drawing to a close, but before it comes to an end in just two weeks’ time, the survivors are due a bit of a breather. In episode 15, “The Calm Before,” the folks of Alexandria, the Hilltop and Oceanside come to the Kingdom to attend Ezekiel’s trade fair, which he hopes will start a new age of friendship between the different communities. The only thing is, the Whisperers are still out there.

The 10 new promo images below give us a taste of what’s to come in season 9’s penultimate episode and for once, most of them show the characters with big grins on their faces. You have Ezekiel and his queen, Carol, welcoming their guests, Henry and Lydia’s romance continuing to blossom, and even Michonne sports a smile as she introduces Judith to Carol, who hasn’t seen the girl since she was a toddler. Just about everyone in attendance looks to be enjoying themselves.

Unfortunately, another photos reminds us that Alpha’s still out there. The bald bad guy has a look of grim determination on her face which heavily suggests she’s going to twist Ezekiel’s fair into something that the survivors will remember for a long time to come. For all the wrong reasons, too. After all, the finale’s titled “The Storm,” with its synopsis teasing that it’ll see the communities dealing with “overwhelming loss.”

Comic book readers will have a fair idea of what’s going to go down, too. On the page, the whole thing results in bloodshed when many beloved characters end up as severed heads on pikes, a gruesome warning from Alpha for them to stay off Whisperer territory. Which characters meet this fate on the TV series is what we’re not looking forward to finding out when The Walking Dead 9×15 “The Calm Before” airs on AMC this Sunday.