'The Walking Dead Recap': Get All the Details of the Season Premiere

— -- Spoilers below!

Season seven of AMC's "The Walking Dead" promised to be a dark one, and on that front, it didn't disappoint, as devastating as it was.

Fans were left hanging at the end of season six about whom Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan executed with his barbed wire bat Lucille, and they had to wait about 20 minutes into the premiere to find out who died.

Long story short: It was Abraham.

Longer story? It was Abraham and Glenn.

When the show begins, the executions have happened, and Rick, still kneeling, vows he's going to kill Negan. In response, Negan drags Rick away, and into an RV.

Negan gets behind the wheel and takes Rick for a ride, tempting Rick with his own hatchet within reach.

Rick reaches, and Negan holds him at bay with a rifle. He beats him into submission before parking in a walker-infested area.

As flashbacks of every hero flash by Rick's eyes -- the victims still unknown to the viewer -- Negan says of the hatchet, "This is mine," and of Rick, "You are mine. Those people out there are mine."

He then throws the ax among the walkers and forces Rick to fetch it. Rick fights off the walkers and scrambles to the top of the RV; we can see he somehow got through with the ax.

At the 20-minute mark, the episode flashed back to the execution, and it's revealed Negan killed Abraham. After the first blow, Abraham stands up tall and tells Negan, to put it politely, to “suck” a certain part of his anatomy.

Negan smashes Abraham's head into pieces.

He then teases Rosita, Abraham's ex, with the bloody Lucille until Daryl gets up in a rage and punches him. Negan's thugs grab Daryl, but Negan orders them not to kill him.

Instead, as punishment, Negan spins around and brains Glenn; he struggles, his eye hanging out, to say, "Maggie, I'll find you," before Negan goes off again and beats his head into the dirt.

And with that we flash back into the present, with Rick on the RV roof. Negan fires through the roof, forcing Rick to jump to a walker hanged from a bridge. Rick is surrounded. Walkers at his feet and the walker's neck about to give way, sending Rick into a sea of walkers.

Just then, Negan starts shooting; covering him. As he does, visions of Rosita, Maggie Aaron, Michonne, Carl and the rest getting clubbed by Negan, as Rick scrambles into the RV.

Negan reveals two were killed -- the rest were Rick's imagination -- and Negan cleans the hatchet off with alcohol, making it seem Rick's hand is next. Instead, Negan gives him back the ax, telling Rick it's his to use to work for him.

Back at the campsite, Negan tells Rick that despite it all, he still sees defiance in Rick. He orders guns on the heads of the survivors and Carl to the ground, Negan wrapping his gun-belt around the boy's arm.

He uses a marker to draw a line on the boy's arm and orders Rick to chop it off with his own hatchet to prove Rick's obedience and spare the others, as well as those at Alexandria.

Rick struggles, desperate and trapped. "Dad: just do it," Carl whispers.

Rick and Michonne plead for another choice. Negan offers none.

As Rick's ax is about to fall, Negan spares him from making the terrible decision. It was all about breaking Rick and, finally, Negan gets the submissive look he has been looking for.

He orders Daryl into a van, promising Rick he'll cut pieces off of Daryl if Rick ever disobeys.

"Welcome to a brand new beginning," Negan says to the gang, before telling them he's leaving them a truck with which they're going to get him his stuff.

Negan and his gang decamp, and the heroes are left to mourn in slow-mo. Maggie starts flipping out, understandably, demanding the rest leave her to bury Glenn and get ready to fight Negan's Saviors.

"They have Daryl, they have an army," Rick protests.

They all agree they won't leave Maggie, who says she won't leave Glenn where he was killed. Rick and the others prepare to take Glenn while Eugene, Rosita and Sasha take Abraham.

The show ends with an idyllic what-if: Glenn and Abraham are still alive, eating with the rest of the gang in sunlight.

Rick gets into the RV and drives away, as a lone walker snacks on two puddles of red left behind; the puddles of his friends' brains.

"The Walking Dead" returns next Sunday, Oct. 30 on AMC.