Clocking in at around four-and-a-half minutes long, the season 4 trailer for The Walking Dead showed off a fair amount of detail with regard to the upcoming season - highlighting life in the prison with the Woodbury expatriates, Tyrese's growing role, Hershel's growing discontentment, and more. One thing that was missing, though, was last season's "Big Bad," The Governor.

Though David Morrissey is slated to reprise his role this season, there is great mystery regarding how he will be used and how often he will show up. According to a new report, though, it seems that The Governor could actually dominate a portion of the first half of this next season with what is being "unofficially" described as a pair of "standalone Governor installments."

To fans of The Walking Dead, this probably won't come as a surprise as the show went back and forth last season with standalone prison episodes and standalone Woodbury episodes. Doing this allowed both settings to be more fully explored as we were introduced to a batch of new characters in Woodbury like The Governor, Milton, and for awhile there, Michonne.

With this season promising more introductions due to the swelled prison population, it seems smart to employ the same or a similar device, lest they try to tell too many stories at once, blunting the show's overall creative trajectory.

Walking Dead Season 3 Midseason Premiere The Governor

As for what we'll see of The Governor, one can only speculate in a thoroughly spoilerific way.

Last season's conclusion saw the one-eyed, zombie head-collecting bad guy riding away from a pile of his bullet-riddled former acolytes, with only two scared and confused flunkies by his side. In the season 4 trailer, it's quite clear that someone is acting against Rick and the prison group from the shadows, but while it's easy to assume that that could be the work of The Governor, the producers of The Walking Dead like to embrace an approach that can sometimes be the opposite of obvious, so let's not assume that he's responsible

We know that the show doesn't typically use flashbacks as a storytelling device (or, at least, not in a sustained way), so any standalone episodes detailing The Governor's journey from that pile to the wilderness and back again seems a bit unlikely as well.

Could we see The Governor seducing another group with his syrupy charms? Anything's possible. All we can say for certain is that The Governor is a mad man driven by revenge and un-tethered from any residual humanity that once resided inside of him, and that, regardless of whether or not we see him in horrifying "fun-size" increments or in standalone episodes, he will be an arresting force for the bad side of things.

Are you looking forward to season 4, Screen Rant readers? Let us know in the comments.

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The Walking Dead returns on October 13th, 2013 on AMC

Source: TV Line