On Sunday, the second to last episode of season 4 of The Walking Dead will air on AMC, but many fans are still reeling from last week's episode.

Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead comic book creator and writer and executive producer of the show, warned us that this week's episode was the one "people are going to be talking about," but that doesn't mean that the violent episode, "The Grove," did not horrify viewers.

"...I wasn't really that worried about AMC," Scott M. Gimple, show showrunner, told Entertainment Weekly. "...This was not a story that was sensational. We weren't exploiting anything. It was something that was very much a part of Carol's story and very much these girls' story and very much a story of this world, and I felt that from the jump we had a very sensitive approach to it. No matter how extreme the end was, we weren't just doing it for shock. And AMC felt the same way."

Fans are hoping to find out if the smoke seen in "The Grove" came from Daryl Dixon's fire.

"...I refuse to give a definitive answer because I don't want to tell you what it is," Gimple said. "If I wanted folks to believe that definitively, I would have somehow tied that in definitively, but I want people to decide that. In the end, I have very hard feelings about what everything means..."

So what could possibly be left for this season's last two episodes? Gimple says some groups will reunite by chance "possibly."

"Both episodes are really big episodes," Gimple teased."There are some insane things that happen. There are some tragic things that happen, There are some things that happen that are hopeful, and there is just some remarkably dark stuff and stories crashing together."

"And we will really see certain characters pushed to their limit, in a way ... that Carol was, in these final two episodes," Gale Anne Hurd, executive producer, told Entertainment Weekly.

Hurd also confirmed that Rick Grimes will be pushed to his "absolute limit."

"And it's always a question of how much can you come back from those moments and those choices, and that's where season 5 will take us," she explained.

The next episode, "Us," premieres Sunday at 9/8c on AMC. Viewers can watch the latest episodes on AMC.com using their cable provider login.

---

Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @SH____4.