Negan and Rick head toward war on 'The Walking Dead'

— -- Sunday's season seven finale of "The Walking Dead" opens with Sasha listening to music through headphones, her eyes closing as she seems to doze off.

She's awakened in her cell. Negan presents her with a hearty breakfast with smiley face pancakes and makes an offer. "Big day today," he says.

Meanwhile, at Alexandria, Rick's gang questions Dwight. Daryl lunges at him and puts a knife to his throat. Tara urges him to kill Dwight for killing her girlfriend, Dr. Denise.

Dwight reveals Saviors are coming, and offers to fell trees to slow them down. "I want Negan dead," he pleads, explaining that since his wife Sherri went away, he has no reason to be loyal. Meanwhile, at Hilltop, Maggie and Jesus prepare to fight.

Someplace else, a Kingdom contingent led by Carol and King Ezekiel finds Morgan hellbent on singular vengeance. They convince him to join with them to fight the Saviors instead.

At Alexandria, their allies, the Scavengers, roll up and take positions in and around the wall as Rosita sets explosives.

Negan bargains with Sasha, explaining that three people needed to die to make up for Rick's insolence. She pleads that no one has to die, then settles with him: "Just one person has to die."

In an apparent flashback, Eugene talks to Sasha, encouraged that she didn't take the poison pill he gave her.

As Alexandria makes ready, Eugene rolls in on a truck, using a megaphone to ask for Rick's compliance. When Rick asks where Negan is, Eugene replies: "I'm Negan."

Rick gives Tara the signal and she hits a detonator button. Nothing happens.

Just then, all the Scavengers turn their guns on Rick's gang, with Jadis pulling a gun on Rick. Negan himself comes out of a truck...with Dwight. He betrayed Rick's gang, just like the Scavengers, who disarm their Alexandria folks.

Suffice it to say, he's not pleased with Rick. "You pushed me and you pushed me!" Negan rants, especially angry that Rick's explosives would have killed one of formerly his own, Eugene. "You people are animals!" Negan says.

Negan has Simon and Dwight display a coffin, revealing Sasha inside.

"I want all the guns," Negan tells Rick, and "a person of your own choosing" to die.

"I don't wanna kill her," he said, knocking on the coffin with Lucille.

Sasha has another dream of Abraham, and we have another flashback, this as Sasha volunteers to get into the coffin, with an iPod provided by the self-described "selfish coward" Eugene. Sasha is as she was at the beginning, listening to the music -- except she pops the pill and swigs water.

Cut to the "present." Negan opens the coffin...and Walker Sasha comes out! And all hell breaks loose.

Sasha launches onto Negan, knocking him off the truck and Carl and Daryl open fire. Rosita catches a bullet and is pulled to safety. A full-on gun battle kicks off.

On a raised platform, Rick is still at the gun of Jadis, begging her for a new deal.

Instead she shoots him in the side and knocks him off the ledge. Michonne gets her butt kicked by her Scavenger counterpart. Jadis leads Rick to Negan, who has taken Carl hostage, and once again, on his knees. Michonne, beaten badly, tries to fights back.

Negan tells Rick he's going to kill Carl -- just as Michonne apparently falls from her sniper perch.

"You chose this!" Negan says, noting that even though he likes Carl, he's going to try to kill him with one swing of Lucille. Rick remains defiant. "I'm gonna kill you," he tells Negan. "Maybe not now...but I will kill you," he said, calling back his threat from the season's beginning.

Negan winds up, Carl kneeling before him, when Ezekiel's tiger Shiva pounces out of nowhere, taking out one of Negan's goons. The Kingdom comes in blazing. Hilltop charges in next, Maggie at the front.

The Scavengers run away under the cover of smoke grenades. Negan hops in a truck and under heavy fire drives away, middle finger extended. The united good guys clear the baddies out, and Rick finds the Scavenger Michonne dead. He then finds Michonne, bloodied but alive.

Back at the Sanctuary, Negan asks Eugene how Sasha could have died...he claims she suffocated. Negan seems skeptical, but turns to an assembled throng of supporters: "We are going to war!" he yells to them, to cheers.

Moments later, the assembled heroes reconnect. In a voiceover, Maggie describes that Glenn's decision to save Rick way back when has brought them all here to this day. It's then revealed she's talking to Sasha in a flashback, as they took in one last sunset before they went their separate ways for the last time.

"The Walking Dead" returns in October on AMC.