'The Walking Dead' Showrunner Promises A High-Stakes Third Season

(WARNING! The following contains potential spoilers for seasons two and three of AMC's "The Walking Dead." Ye be warned.)

With the stakes the highest they've been, Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors' bonds must be more durable than ever this coming season on "The Walking Dead," the AMC hit's showrunner claims.

The second season ended with family-man farmer Hershel (Scott Wilson) seeing his farm reduced to flames. The sword-wielding slayer of the undead Michonne (Danai Gurira) emerged in her first encounter with one of Rick's (Andrew Lincoln) band of the living. Then, in the final moments of the season, the Ricktatorship's citizens came upon this season's stronghold of survival: the Prison.

Showrunner Glen Mazzara told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview accompanying the briefest of clips previewing just one fight awaiting Rick that - to borrow a line from another acclaimed television drama - it's "live together, or die alone" to even reach the safety inside the prison walls.

"If I don't get this done, if I don't kill that walker, that walker may kill someone else," Mazzara said. "So everybody bonds together for the good of the group. They all have each other's backs."

It will even come down to a sort of class warfare eventually, as Rick's group is guaranteed to eventually come into contact with the amassing Woodbury, Ga., power of local dictator the Governor, played by David Morrissey. Rick is also bound to enter a collision course witht he returning Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker.)

"The pace seems very different this year and I think it's just a lot more suspenseful, it's a lot more intense than it was last year," Mazzara said.

As Hershel has said in more than one released clip so far, "Christ promised a resurrection of the dead. I just thought he had something different in mind." Well, this season, things get different.

The third season of "The Walking Dead" opens Sunday Oct. 14 on AMC.