What Comes After: Review for The Walking Dead 905

What Comes After:
Review for The Walking Dead 905
by R.C. Murphy

There’s spoilers in this review. Proceed with caution.

Well. Talk about something completely different. We’ve seen similar storytelling techniques from this production team before, but Rick’s trip back and forth from the Great Beyond or wherever to reality takes the surreal dream stuff to a whole new level. For what they wanted to do for Rick’s final season, it works wonderfully. It even gave them a reason to bring Shane back for a little bit. Jon Bernthal really grew into his acting skills during his time away. His couple minutes back in Shane’s shoes outshined some of his better moments from the first seasons.

All Rick’s visits with the dead are also more than a little heartbreaking.

BTS, Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, Scott Wilson as Hershel Greene – The Walking Dead _ Season 9, Episode 5 – Photo Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

As many of you know, the world lost an amazing man, Scott Wilson, not that long ago. He’d opted to keep his illness a secret and worked until he couldn’t anymore. This appearance as Hershel is one of the last projects he worked on, despite the severity of the illness. For as fun as the Shane scene is for Jon’s performance, this final goodbye from Hershel, and Scott, is a hundred times as tragic. Not only is their conversation one of men who’ve suffered great losses, but it’s a secret final farewell no one knew they were witnessing while on set that day.

The majority of Rick’s visions take him back to the hospital where he woke from the coma. Oddly enough, his new wound is in a similar location as the gunshot that took him out before the undead rose. The visions do not, unfortunately, take him to his family as he hopes. I kinda hoped, too. But I think with the visitors we do get, it’s good. A visit from Carl and Glenn would have made it amazing, though. The episode would have felt more like a goodbye with that small tweak to the cameo lineup.

While Rick struggles to stay on his horse in order to draw the walkers to the bridge, Maggie uses her well-earned anger to march straight through Alexandria’s gates, past Michonne, and right into Negan’s cell. Says something about Maggie’s determination when not even Michonne can talk sense to her, doesn’t it? When faced with Maggie’s logic, Michonne can’t look her in the eye and tell her that she is wrong, that continuing with the insane eye-for-an-eye logic only leaves behind a world of suffering. No. Because if she were in Maggie’s shoes, if Negan were the one to put Carl in the ground? Negan would’ve been dead before sunset the following day, no matter what.

So now everything’s going Maggie’s way. She’s in the room with the man who murdered her husband. Does she follow through with her threat by bashing Negan’s skull in with a crowbar? Nah. Her attempts to grandstand and make herself feel good about the impending murder are undermined by Negan’s visceral reaction to the very idea of being freed from his prison. Sure, it’s the hard, painful way, but anyway is up when one has spent so much time in near solitude. At last Rick’s way of doing things makes sense to Maggie. I’m sure he’d be elated to hear she’s moved on from her murderous rage after all this time, but he’s too busy, ya know, bleeding out and occasionally dying while zombies shamble closer and closer.

The others eventually catch wind that something’s not right near the camp. It’s far too late to do any real good, though. Daryl’s plan to collapse the bridge with the undead doesn’t work, leaving Rick the only person between a horde and a free pass to the nearest community. Daryl keeps Rick alive from a distance long enough for Rick to hatch a dangerous plan. Using some mysteriously handy TNT, Rick shoots it and blows the bridge sky high. Flaming walkers pour into the rushing river below. Rick is nowhere to be seen.

Downstream, Anne’s rustbucket RV breaks down, leaving her no choice but to arrange the pickup from the helicopter right there, awfully close to the camp. The bridge explosion startles her. What washes down the river moments later is far scarier. Thankfully most of the walkers are dead or too damaged to go after her. There’s something else in the sea of scorched dead—hope. Switching her plan at the last moment, Anne pleads with the helicopter to take herself and one other, a “B” who is strong, but injured, and she owes him a debt. The last we see of Rick Grimes and Anne, they’re flying off in the well-equipped mystery helicopter.

To add yet another twist, instead of waiting an episode to do a time jump, the production uses Rick’s departure shot to rapidly age the landscape. Now it’s several years later and new survivors are in the field where the helicopter took off from. They’re in trouble. Yet they need not worry. A pint-sized hero lurks in the woods. And she’s got a pretty snazzy hat, too.

I look forward to Judith causing even more chaos than Carl. She’s totally the only sheriff they need in Alexandria.


The Obliged: Review for The Walking Dead 904

The Obliged:
Review for The Walking Dead 904
by R.C. Murphy

Watch out, there’s a horde ahead! A horde of episode spoilers, that is.

Sometimes a dream just isn’t obtainable. Could be because said dream cannot be done with the means at hand. Other times Nature puts Her foot down and reminds one of their place in the world. In the case of Rick’s precious bridge, both forces wind up closing down construction. First, over half of the workforce walks out. Then the former Saviors rob the Kingdom and there’s a firefight with numerous casualties. All that bad news comes after the biggest blow of all—the newly risen river will wash away the bridge supports long before the remaining laborers can finish repairs. Everyone from the camp has a near-death, or actual death, experience during this doomed build. Sometimes escaping one near-death situation leads one right into the path of another, though.

And sometimes that path is cut by the people whom you trust the most.

This particular trip started back when Maggie made it clear that Negan’s survival was the final nail in the coffin of her open cooperation with Alexandria, particularly their leader, Rick. She’s had nearly two years since then to subvert certain fail-safe systems put in place to keep her activities in check. Her most important weapon being Rick’s good pal Daryl. Maggie’s second most important weapon is her rage. It keeps her focused on her mission, despite Jesus’ best efforts. While Maggie rides toward Alexandria, Rick is led astray by Daryl. Their inevitable physical encounter over Negan’s fate isn’t all that satisfying when it’s cut short by the pair falling into a pit. While it’s not his original plan, Daryl still gets the job done, delaying Rick long enough for Maggie to get to Alexandria.

The price for Maggie’s “justice” comes at the episode’s end, when shortly after scrambling from the pit, Rick opts to lead the walkers away from the main road on horseback instead of cutting off Maggie’s mission. At a crossroads with heavy debris, Rick accidentally leads one horde into another, spooking his horse. Our hero is impaled, and we’re left to wonder if this is finally it for Rick. We know he’s leaving, just not how he’s leaving. The production team has said it’s not death, but things aren’t looking too promising for Rick’s continued survival at this point.

What does Maggie hope to get out of her scheme? Will she even follow through? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Then there’s Michonne, who is barely hanging in there by the skin of her teeth. While the bridge crew works, she remains in Alexandria to make sure everything runs as it should. Unfortunately, not even the mental drain from being everyone’s stern voice of reason is enough to exhaust Michonne, allowing her a good night’s rest. To blow off steam, she does what any woman would do; she decapitates zombies in the middle of the night. One of her daytime chores puts her in charge of forcing Negan to eat during his hunger strike. They make a deal. All she has to do is chat with a lonely man for a little while. Negan digs his mental hooks deep during the conversation. The theme for Michonne’s story arc in this episode is how her life is so similar to Negan’s. There’s even a moment early in the episode where after finding a lynched zombie, Michonne’s attacked and forced to use a baseball bat to defend herself. The hunger strike ends when she admits they have similarities, however her outlook on the future is far, far better than his. We glimpse where Negan’s head is really at during the end of their second conversation when Michonne reveals that Lucille is still in the field where the final battle took place.

In the junkyard, Gabriel does his best to make what are surely his final moments with Anne as pleasant as possible. If one ignores the fact that she’s about to turn him into a walker as payment for transportation on some creepy sounding guy’s helicopter. The lord must have blessed that man’s tongue. All Gabriel’s talk about forgiveness gets to Anne. Instead of turning him, she knocks him out and runs. The only trace of her left behind is a note pinned into Gabriel’s coat.

Looks like we’re saying goodbye to quite a few characters. Either that or this universe is about to expand again.