'Walking Dead' Teases More Violence with Super Bowl Ad

The Walking Dead returns from its mid-season break next week, and the series is looking to turn around the ratings slide that plagued the season's first half. A teaser trailer for the series that aired during last weekend's Super Bowl, however, seemed to play up the controversial violence that got the slide started in the first place.

The 15-second teaser  featured a simple shot of a football lying on turf with the sound of crickets in the background. Suddenly, Negan's barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat, Lucille, descends on the football and crushes it with a sickening splat, followed by the title "Football Season Is Over."

The teaser alludes to the violent season premiere episode, in which Negan kills two characters in a particularly horrific manner. The graphic (and arguably gratuitous) violence of the episode was denounced by many critics and fans alike, and many blamed the backlash against the episode for the series' unprecedented ratings drop through the first half of the season.

It's surprising then that the series producers would choose to refresh fans' memories about that episode in an attempt to generate excitement about the second-half premiere.

The second half of TWD's seventh season gets underway on Sunday, February 12, on AMC.