The Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln Teases an '80s Action-Inspired Episode

This Sunday's episode of The Walking Dead, "New Best Friends," will formally introduce yet another new community to the Greater D.C. area where the show currently resides.

We first saw these new folks at the end of the midseason premiere when they surrounded Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and friends when the Alexandrians tracked them near the junkyard they call home. We don't know anything about them yet except they dress funny, they're well-armed and Rick was happy to see them.

We're about to learn a lot more about the group the staff of The Walking Dead informally calls the "Heapsters," according to Andrew Lincoln.

"I'm excited for people to see a new world, a new group, a new society," Lincoln told TVGuide.com. "There are some crazy characters."

He's not exaggerating -- these folks are weirder than you're expecting. Lincoln is also excited for people to see the episode's '80s-inspired action setpiece.

"There's a sequence that feels like a mash-up between Mad Max, Hellraiser and Evil Dead which I'm thrilled to see how the audience reacts to," he said.

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Overall, the episode is going to prove that the "levity" Lincoln promised was coming in the second half of Season 7 was for real, and the tonal shift established in the midseason premiere is here to stay.

"It's not a one-off, that episode," he said. "We're very much on a trajectory toward a season finale that is in my opinion one of the best we've ever done."

But to get there, we're going to have to go through the junkyard first.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.