How you felt about Sunday night’s midseason premiere of The Walking Dead, “Rock in the Road,” likely depends entirely on how you felt about the first eight episodes of the season. If watching Rick Grimes and his ragtag band of warrior misfits be repeatedly brutalized by a violent sadist in between scenes of B-characters, like Tara and Dwight, exploring new communities worked for you, then you probably hated it, as there was no Negan to be found, here. If you were ready for the group to move on as a team and work towards a common goal again, with Rick sitting firmly in the driver’s seat, then you probably loved it. But either way, the main takeaway here is this: recruiting soldiers for the suburban Virginia war against Negan and his Saviors will take up the latter half of Season 7, as Rick and his crew go from survivor’s colony to survivor’s colony to see who is up for a fight. And when that war finally comes — in the season finale, no doubt — it’s going to be a miserable bloodbath. ...Just, you know, a miserable bloodbath that hopefully won’t alienate fans and enrage the PTC this time around, like the miserable bloodbath we saw during the Season 7 premiere. Already on the Grimes Gang’s side by the end of the night were some members of the Hilltop clan, whom we visited briefly at the top of the episode. Gregory — who is still the leader of this spartan clan, because sure, why not — of course told Rick to go scratch straight away, because he’s the “then they came for me” guy in that famous poem about Nazi Germany, and does nothing unless it benefits him immediately and directly. But since no one at Hilltop listens to Gregory now that Maggie, Sasha, and Jesus are their unofficial ruling triumvirate, a small group of them quietly approached Rick’s team and promised to fight the Saviors if given proper training. Great! Now they have approximately 12 people. Next up was the Grimes Gang’s first trip to Ezekiel’s Kingdom; an excursion that was somehow even less successful than the one to Hilltop. Virginia Community Relations Manager Paul "Jesus" Rovia had known about the Kingdom for quite some time — apparently, he approached them first about the “kill the Saviors” deal that eventually went to Alexandria — so he got Rick, Daryl, Michonne, Sasha, and the rest of them through to meet the King without a hassle. However, Ezekiel is still reticent to enter into war with the Saviors. He explained to Rick that he once tried to expand his Kingdom by sending his well-trained soldiers out to settle new land, but lost a whole lot of good men — and some perfectly functional limbs! — to walkers in the process. And even tales of Glenn and Abraham’s brutal deaths couldn’t convince Morgan to join the war, so the Grimes Gang left the Kingdom with their tails between their legs. (ASIDE: Morgan still thinks that capturing Negan and Negan alone is the best way to stop the Saviors — and given that the jail cell he spent multiple episodes building last season is still around, this seems like a pretty safe bet for a plot point come season finale.)