DAWN OF THE END?
The Walking Dead is shaking things up, but will fans stick around long enough to see results?
Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for The Walking Dead.
For a while now, The Walking Dead has been wandering as aimlessly as the zombies that give the show its name.
Nonsensical plot contrivances, an annoying two-dimensional villain and episodes that slowed (if not outright halted) the show’s forward momentum have left fans frustrated and fleeing.
December’s mid-season finale did little to stop the ratings slide, despite a shocking plot twist that was teased beforehand. At 7.9 million viewers, it drew the lowest numbers for a fall finale since Season 2.
Worse than that, the promised twist kicked off a viewer insurrection, with fans — outraged at the pending death of original character Carl Grimes — calling for the firing of showrunner Scott M. Gimple.
(They got part of their wish, sort of. Writer Angela Kang was promoted to showrunner in January, effective for Season 9, but Gimple has been made chief content officer for the Walking Dead TV universe.)
That brings us to The Walking Dead’s return Sunday (9 p.m. on AMC).
I am forbidden by AMC to reveal specific plot details, including “references to any character deaths,” until after the episode airs.
But since we last saw Carl pale and sweaty with zombie teeth marks on his torso, you don’t need me to tell you this will be his final appearance (barring any future flashbacks).
A substantial chunk of the 82minute episode is devoted to Carl’s goodbye, which is fitting considering he’s the longest-serving character besides Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and that we’ve watched actor Chandler Riggs, who’s now 18, grow up on the show.
The other parts of the episode have to do with the Kingdom, where King Ezekiel is being held prisoner, but it’s Carl’s scenes that carry the show.
One montage has Carl, after making peace with his fate, making the most of the time he has left and it’s a bittersweet reminder of the character’s youth and also that of the actor who plays him.
And there is much tenderness in his scenes with father Rick and stepmom Michonne (Danai Gurira), particularly when they remind us of the unbreakable bond between father and son (which probably made those scenes particularly hard to film for Lincoln and Riggs).
There’s also a heartbreaking callback to the words of Carl’s dead mother, Lori, that stings both for the recollection of what Carl has already endured and the realization that the potential Lori saw in him has been lost.
But that brings me to another point: as respectfully as the episode handles Carl’s demise, it doesn’t justify why he had to die.
Gimple told Variety recently that the death “creates the last sort of conversation of who these people are going to be and how they’re going to move into the future.”
That Carl in the optimism of youth — even a youth cut short by the apocalypse — would make a plea for peace in the name of building community is plausible. I can even buy that Rick, swept up in regret and grief, would buy into the vision in the moment.
But how does a character such as Rick, a man given to brutal violence of his own, who has masterminded the war against the antagonists known as the Saviors and vowed to personally kill their leader (cartoonish villain Negan), begin to steer away from so-called “all out war”?
How does he convince members of his own group who have watched Negan brutally murder their loved ones to now spare the Saviors? And how does he convince Negan and the Saviors to do the same for people they are bent on wiping out?
Presumably this is what the rest of Season 8 will deal with, but I still maintain that the transition would be more credible with Carl alive and leading by example.
The show’s past missteps make it hard to trust that the shift from war to peace will happen in a believable way.
This is the series, after all, that faked a beloved character’s demise in Season 6 then had him reappear several episodes later, saved from death by zombie thanks to a strategically placed dumpster.
Sunday’s episode falls back on some bad habits: choppy edits; gratuitous violence (surely, eight seasons in, we’ve seen enough intestines to last us a lifetime); plot points that don’t make sense (when outnumbered by automatic weapon-toting Saviors, apparently only the good guys can shoot straight); those tight close-ups of faces that are ham-fisted attempts to convey emotion.
But the worst habit of all is taking viewers for granted.
A new showrunner might shake things up for the better, but how many fans will still be hanging on by Season 9 if Gimple and crew don’t get the rest of Season 8 right?