Killed

Spoilers from last night’s finale of The Walking Dead Last night’s hour and a half finale of The Walking Dead seemed to epitomize all that was wrong with this season. There was a lot of filler and some genuinely tense moments, but it ended on a cliffhanger that left fans frustrated. At the end we got to see Negan, the big bad from the Saviors, played by the incredible Jeffrey Dean Morgan. He was definitely scary but more of a sympathetic character than I was expecting. Negan’s long speech to the crouching Alexandrites made sense to me. I especially liked how he explained that this was retribution for killing his men. “When I sent my people to kill your people for killing my people, you killed more of my people. Not cool.” He also said that he didn’t want to kill them, he just wanted them to work for him, which again sounded reasonable in context. As Morgan explained on Talking Dead afterwards, Rick’s people had killed over 20 Saviors, so Negan selecting just one person to kill was in no way extreme. The ending looked extreme to viewers though, especially when we were given just a few clues as to whom Negan actually killed. I can’t believe producers used that cheap tactic, yet again, after leaving Glenn’s fate up in the air for several episodes earlier this season. During the final scene at first I thought that Negan had selected Carl to kill, but he was actually instructing his men to cut out Carl’s eye and feed it to Rick if anyone tried to stop him. That means that Carl and Rick are safe. Highlight the text below to see speculative spoilers from the comics: In the comics, Glenn meets his end here, but we know that WD producers don’t follow the comics and Glenn was at the end of the line. It looked like Negan selected someone more in the middle. It may have been Abraham, who died earlier in the comics from a crossbow to the head by the Saviors. Denise died on the show in the same way that Abraham died in the comics, so producers may have subbed Abraham’s death for Glenn’s here. The rest of last night’s episode was just ok. I’m beginning to feel sorry for Morgan (the character, played by Lennie James), because his entire story arc with Carol just felt like filler. Morgan’s otherwise interesting backstory took up an entire episode earlier this season when we were waiting to hear what happened to Glenn. (Incidentally, that episode was also written by Scott M. Gimple, who was responsible for this one. Eff that guy.) Carol looked to be mortally injured when we last saw her, but Morgan and Carol coincidentally then ran into a couple of good looking nice guys in padded costumes. That seemed mildly ridiculous to me, like of course they’re going to fix up Carol and they’re going to be allies. Also ridiculous: father Gabriel being put in charge of Alexandria like he’s some trustworthy badass now when he’s always been a sniveling backstabber. As for the fate of Maggie’s pregnancy, I only hope that she doesn’t die. I’m not too concerned either way. Another baby would only be a liability in this universe. During Talking Dead, producer and this episode’s writer Scott Gimple very meekly explained the non-end. “The end of the story is what people saw and when we reveal who was on the receiving end, that’s going to be the start of another story… the effects from that.” He explained that he wanted viewers to feel suspense and terror like the core characters and that “We’re going to deliver you a story next season that justifies it.” Comic creator Robert Kirkman also said that he loved cliffhangers and defended it by saying “The cliffhanger isn’t the story.” He explained that the story was more about Rick’s transformation from being in charge to being beat down. It’s not like this blockbuster show is going to lose viewership if they wrap up lose ends. They don’t need to bait us to get us to watch next season. photos credit: AMC