Prison photos: 'Walking Dead' goes to the big house

The anticipation is already building for the October return of AMC's The Walking Dead - and Entertainment Weekly has just revved it up further by releasing these photos of the prison glimpsed in the Season Two finale. The prison is a pivotal - and fan-favorite - set piece of Robert Kirkman's comic. And the initial photos seem to be doing it justice.

In the first pic, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) is in mid-swing to deliver a helluva hatchet-headache for one zombie. In the second pic (after the jump) Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and co. seem to be surrounded by some undead inmates.

"I’m incredibly proud of the prison," showrunner Glen Mazzara told EW. "I think our crew has done a great job. It’s a huge sense of scale and magnitude I haven’t seen on any other show as far as construction. What’s important to us is the prison itself is now a character in the show. It’s a haunted house, it’s scary, it’s frightening, and there are parts of the prison that are always terrifying, that are always inaccessible to our group. It’s not necessarily the blessing that the prison in the comic book turned out to be."

After catching glimpses of badass zombie killer Michonne and the return of Merle, this is a big reveal.

-Aaron Sagers