The Walking Dead Season 8: 8 Things You Might've Missed In Episode 1

After months and months of anticipation, The Walking Dead finally returned this week, celebrating its 100th episode in the process with the premiere of its eighth season.

While the landmark instalment, titled Mercy, was used as an excuse for the producers to honour key moments from the zombie drama’s journey to this milestone, it also developed the plot by firing the first shots in the conflict between Rick Grimes' militia and Negan’s Saviours.

We saw the communities of Alexandria, Hilltop Colony, and The Kingdom begin to work together, and favourite pairings such as Rick and Maggie and Daryl and Carol reunited. We also started to get answers to the old-man Rick questions raised by the season trailer.

Overall it was a strong response to the criticism of season seven (aside from the frustratingly obvious plot hole of Rick not shooting down Negan when he had the chance), taking The Walking Dead train full steam ahead into All Out War, with a stop or two at callback central.

There was quite a lot to digest, so here is some of what you might have missed...

Director Greg Nicotero chose this landmark episode to remember the show's beginnings seven years ago with lots of callbacks to the pilot, some of which were obvious and some more subtle.

There was a shot-for-shot recreation of the visit to the walker-infested gas station, right down to the appearance of the same extra as the all-grown-up little girl zombie, confirmed by actress Addy Miller on her Instagram page, only this time with Carl in place of Rick.

Old-man Rick’s introduction, hotly anticipated but still ambiguous, closely mirrored his waking up from a coma in hospital before he knew about the outbreak of the virus.

The 100th episode even finished in eerily similar fashion to the first, with the camera panning upwards to reveal a swarm of walkers surrounding Negan and Gabriel at The Sanctuary, just as it had done when Rick was trapped inside the tank in Atlanta.

These were pretty cool snippets, even if they were a little self-indulgent.