We’ve got your exclusive first look at Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon in season 9 of The Walking Dead with the season’s first episodic shot of the crossbow-wielding badass. Not only that, but we’ve got some scoop from new showrunner Angela Kang about what to expect coming up for the survivors when the show returns this October.

Kang already gave us some valuable insight (along with an image that shows off the new look of the show) into the time jump happening in season 9 and what that means for the landscape our heroes will be traversing. And now she provides some intel in terms of what it means for the characters themselves, and it sounds like the main men and women will be taking center stage.

“We’ll see a lot of the core relationships,” says Kang. “We’ll be delving into those and seeing how people are thinking about bigger problems. And thinking about their philosophies, and thinking about how people come together and create civilization and what those rules are going to be, and how you contend with it. And I think that there’ll be some really interesting storylines for people who care about some of these characters that we’ve been following for years. Because they are family at this point, and they love each other. They respect each other, but those relationships are very complicated. So, we’ll see our group together working in unity in a lot of ways. But you’ll also see some changes in the way that they deal with each other.”

When Kang talks about relationships being “complicated” and there being changes in the way the group deals with each other, what does that mean in terms of Maggie and Daryl not being so happy about Rick’s decision to spare Negan at the end of season 8? “There will definitely be story about Maggie and Daryl and Rick and where they are at with each other,” says Kang. “I don’t want to spoil too much about that storyline, but there will be some surprises along the way with it. It’s definitely something that we will be exploring this season.”