See Michonne in a fiery first image from The Walking Dead season 10

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If season 10 of The Walking Dead is indeed to be Danai Gurira’s last, as EW and others have reported, it looks like her character of Michonne is ready to go out in a blaze of glory.

We’ve got the exclusive first image from season 10, and it shows the warrior mowing down zombies while a fire rages in the background. Obviously it looks super badass, but what is the significance of the image? For that, we went to showrunner Angela Kang for answers.

“One of the things that we have going on this season is, we’re continuing some explorations of natural elements and how they play into our world,” says Kang. “And fire is one of those elements that comes into play in a few key ways that twist the story in a way that will be pretty exciting.”

As Kang notes, fire is dangerous enough in our world. But in a landscape with such limited resources, it’s another matter altogether. “Fire is terrifying now,” says Kang. “But we sort of take for granted that we have people that can deal with it. It obviously has very different implications for our people in an apocalyptic world.”

What else can the showrunner — who has already told EW about the themes that will be covered in season 10 as well as a new comic character that will be making his debut — tease about what we see in this photo? “I don’t want to give too much away about this particular story because hopefully there’s some unexpected aspects to it,” says Kang. “But we will definitely see our people trying to contend with things that they can’t handle in the same ways that we do in our world now.”

We’ll have a new piece of Walking Dead scoop every day leading up the show’s Comic-Con panel in San Diego on July 19.

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