First Look: ‘Walking Dead’ Season 3 Preview Reveals The Prison

**Spoiler Warning for the comments below**

As The Walking Dead heads into season 3, the series will begin its journey down a darker path than viewers of the television series are currently accustomed to seeing. Fortunately, the producers have no intention of changing the extremely polarizing moments from the comics.

Without spoiling what's to come, it's safe to say that whatever terrible things you could imagine happening to a group of survivors in a prison setting that has actual prisoners in it do, in fact, happen - as well as many you could have never imagined.

Comic book fans won't have to worry about The Walking Dead producers trying to lighten up some of the series' darkest moments, as executive producer Glen Mazzara reveals that he has no intention of shying away from anything in the source material:

"There's no place we won't go. Everything is on the table. This is a cutting edge cable drama. I'm comfortable with that material and we answered a lot of these questions on say the Shield and when I worked there, so I'm comfortable dealing with very, very edgy material.

That being said, you want to make sure that things are not gratuitous, that things are not offensive for the sake of being offensive. I don't ever want the show to get too bleak. I think we've done a good job of creating characters that people care about. I think there's a heart to the show.

So we will, you know, tackle issues in our own way but right now everything is on the table and I think if you take a look at those last few episodes we've been making some pretty bold choices and that's where the show lives and that's where we will feel we get the most entertainment value out of the story we're telling."

While it's great the producers have no problem tackling any issue, the network may have. With episodes 1 – 8 of The Walking Dead season 3 already pitched to AMC, the producers are waiting for a green light before they can begin writing the episodes. Whether or not any of these episodes contain any of the more "controversial" elements remains to be seen, but they will come up eventually.

And while there will likely be a few viewers that are uncomfortable with some of the upcoming storylines, there's no doubt that the producers will be able to handle the darker subject matter appropriately – especially one specific interaction between two of the series' new characters.

For those fans who are still in the dark, I'm sure you'll find additional information to satisfy your curiosity in the comments below.

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The Walking Dead Season 3 will premiere October 2012

Follow Anthony on Twitter @anthonyocasio.