The premiere of The Walking Dead Season 5, “No Sanctuary,” proved a hit with audiences and stands as one of the most ruthless episodes in the post-apocalyptic horror series. Ten years ago yesterday (October 12, 2014), the episode, penned by Scott M. Gimple and directed by horror veteran Greg Nicotero, resolved the previous season’s cliffhanger that saw Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his group pursuing refuge in the mysterious Terminus safe zone.
“Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive,” the signs read. The reality was far different. Rick and the others found themselves confined inside a Terminus train car by the group, revealed to be cannibals.
“It was one of the most gratifying experiences that I’ve ever had,” Nicotero revealed in a new interview with ComicBook. “I remember sitting with Scott Gimple and talking about the trough sequence and putting in the baseball bat as a tip to Negan’s impending arrival a couple seasons later.”
The first opening ten minutes to the episode, featuring a butcher with a baseball bat, designed to foreshadow Negan’s arrival a few years later, and a trough filling with the blood of slaughtered Terminus captives, is defined by Nicotero as “probably the most harrowing first 10 minutes of an episode, and we got away with it.”
“I mean, I’m shocked at what we got away with,” Nicotero added. “We shot that episode in nine days, 10 days. I don’t even know how we did it, but we did it. And it really was just a great experience seeing all those stories applied in that particular episode.”
Regarded as one of the best episodes of the series, “No Sanctuary” delivered series-high ratings for AMC, pulling in 17.3 million viewers and another 11 million adults across the 18-49 demographic.
At the time, AMC confirmed that around 22 million viewers tuned in when accounting for time-shifted playback, making the opener the most highly-rated episode in the history of cable television.
