Walking Dead final season review: An undead show ready for the grave

In 2009, AMC debuted a brand new slogan: “Story issues right here.” Kicked off in the course of the season 2 finale of Breaking Dangerous, simply one of many status TV reveals that had lately made a splash on the channel, it recalled an analogous tagline introduced by HBO in 1996: “It’s not TV, it’s HBO.” Each harkened a way of crucial self-importance, dictating that whereas the remainder of TV was a combined bag, these networks had narratives you may depend on. Inside a couple of years of the creation of the landmark mantra, HBO can be the house of The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire. And some years after that, AMC would air Mad Males, Breaking Dangerous, and The Strolling Useless.

That final present is vital as a result of zombie movies (and the horror style at giant) usually aren’t praised for his or her storytelling. In fact, this perspective is fairly inconsiderate — horror is simply as wealthy a vein for good tales and characters as every other style, and one want look no additional than George Romero’s Daybreak of the Useless or Yeon Sang-ho’s Prepare to Busan for very efficient zombie movies. However this was a serialized zombie story on TV, a comparatively new idea. Though it was based mostly on Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s wildly common comedian e book collection, there was an opportunity The Strolling Useless may put AMC’s new slogan to the check.

And it did… time and again. As a result of what began as an immediately acclaimed collection that appeared to rewrite the foundations for what individuals have been accustomed to on TV advanced right into a rote instance of a narrative overstaying its welcome. The finale of The Strolling Useless has been a very long time coming (even because it aired alongside three spinoff collection, with three extra within the pipeline), and the truth that it’s continued its resurrected march lengthy after its contemporaries have wrapped up calls into query its complete thematic spine: How lengthy ought to a narrative about survival proceed to outlive?

From the outset, the hype round The Strolling Useless wasn’t simply restricted to its excessive manufacturing values and top-notch particular results make-up. Its showrunner was Frank Darabont, the director behind movies like The Shawshank Redemption, The Inexperienced Mile, and The Mist, lending his mastery of the difference to a zombie comedian e book. And by the tip of season 1, there have been even talks of Stephen King (to whom Darabont owed a significant chunk of his filmography) writing an episode within the second season. Kirkman was additionally closely concerned with the collection, government producing and writing episodes within the first few seasons as an final show of his blessing (although he’d finally be concerned in a mega lawsuit in opposition to the community, one thing that at this level is sort of a behavior).

Picture: AMC

As The Strolling Useless wraps up its eleventh season, it’s sort of laborious to actually seize what made the present so alluring at first. Clearly, it tapped into a component of wannabe survivalist want achievement. For a lot of, it’s their most well-liked type of apocalypse: A killer virus is just too uncontrollable. Atomic destruction makes one really feel too helpless. However zombies? You simply stab ’em within the mind. Anybody with the barest stage of intuition and a few bullets may do it, proper?

Nonetheless, no matter fist-pumping delight that may be taken when watching Rick Grimes get rid of a horde of zombies is countered by what would develop into The Strolling Useless’s MO: Anybody can die at any time. To start with, that is heart-wrenching: Andrea being compelled to stab her zombified sister, Morgan being unable to shoot his spouse as she shuffles towards the house they as soon as shared collectively, Rick stabbing his former greatest pal Shane to demise as a result of the desperation of this new actuality has introduced his buddy previous the brink of sanity, and so forth. These have been all milked for max drama, with lengthy, lingering, tense standoffs and copious crying. At its greatest, it makes for thrilling tv, particularly should you’re new to “status” TV, which, judging by The Strolling Useless’s skyrocketing scores, many have been.

For those who’d seen The Sopranos or Deadwood or different reveals of their ilk, you’d know that main supporting characters all of a sudden consuming it’s extra function than bug. It makes for gripping stakes and subsequent watercooler dialog. Title within the opening credit be damned: One of many marks of “status TV” was its allowance for dangerous narrative selections that main networks would’ve shied away from. The Strolling Useless took this to its furthest potential restrict, usually being nudged alongside Sport of Thrones (which premiered a yr after) for his or her penchant for removing characters all of a sudden and shockingly.

Nonetheless, the disparate attitudes between these two reveals would develop into clear with time. Sport of Thrones would reveal itself to be working with slightly extra thematic heft than The Strolling Useless, a present that saved coming again to the properly of “Life is merciless and it’ll in all probability make you merciless.” It’s a nihilistic strategy, with any victories, ethical or bodily, usually marked by a swift pulling of the rug. The little woman, Sophia, who the solid spends a literal half season in search of, is found to simply be a zombie in a barn proper subsequent to the place they’ve been staying. Rick’s spouse offers delivery to his new daughter, however dies after a brutal C-section and is shot by her son to forestall her from resurrecting. The record goes on, however one factor is made clear: Any excessive factors within the present, regardless of how lengthy the buildup has been, are destined to be transient. Dissatisfaction is the core.

Picture: Jace Downs/AMC

Picture: Jace Downs/AMC

On one hand, it’s fairly true to life. It doesn’t matter what visions one sees of their very own conquer the undead, essentially the most assured actuality is a depressing one. Nonetheless, from a story perspective, it means taking part in tug of battle with the character of fiction itself. A typical story arc permits for development and for realization and for change. The world you’re in after it’s completed is completely different than the one you began in. However by focusing so closely on “Guess what? It nonetheless sucks!” moments of brutality in opposition to the one characters an viewers can discover any relatable kinship with, you enter a bizarre Pavlov’s canine experiment. The bell dings and also you count on to be disenchanted by what you’re left with. And in a couple of seasons, it could come again to hurt the present in an enormous means.

An important slaying, although, didn’t happen on digicam. The second season would kick off with Darabont being fired from the collection, annoyed with each the funds and the inventive path AMC desired. His plans clearly concerned one thing slightly extra free vary (his concept for the primary episode of the brand new season concerned principally abandoning the primary solid for a bit, as an alternative specializing in a doomed group of troopers waging a futile battle in opposition to a zombie onslaught in Atlanta). What adopted can be a particularly expensive authorized battle between Darabont and AMC, resolved in 2021 to the tune of $200 million.

In a little bit of telling timing, the episode that noticed Darabont’s exit additionally noticed the arrival of Speaking Useless, an aftershow devoted to praising and discussing the night time’s episode with solid and crew members and step one of the TV present’s eventual empire.

Darabont’s departure didn’t appear to shake up any core ethos of The Strolling Useless, particularly because it adopted lots of the main beats of the comics, which additionally had its toes firmly planted in “Oh, holy shit! Wait, what?” bloodlust. However because the collection went on, these beats and the shocking deaths turned all of the present may really matter on. It adopted a formulation for the primary few years: The surviving solid finds a brand new location to bunker down in and some extra survivors to hang around with. Then, the situation turns into poisonous, a bunch of individuals die both by the zombie mouth or deranged human hand, and the solid (or no matter is left of them) is compelled to maneuver on. From the camp to the farm, from the farm to the jail, from the jail to Alexandria — within the fifth season, protagonist Rick tells others, “We’re the strolling lifeless,” and as foolish as that sounds for one particular person to say to a different, it rang true. They aren’t too dissimilar from the military of corpses they’re making an attempt to resist. All they will do is trudge from place to put and hope to not get unceremoniously murdered.

Within the grand scheme of issues, the primary half of the present seems to be simply as marked by the identical narrative exhaustion because the final half. However one factor was completely different: an increase in scores that performed out like an arms race for reputation in opposition to itself. The primary season finale turned essentially the most watched episode in primary cable historical past for the grownup 18-49 demographic. The season 2 finale gave AMC its highest scores ever, solely to be handily crushed by the third-season premiere. You get the concept — the primary episode of the seventh season noticed the second-highest scores within the present’s historical past, driving excessive off the final season’s cliffhanger ending.

By the tip of the seventh season, these can be practically minimize in half.

Picture: AMC

The demise of Glenn, the fan-favorite character and by far essentially the most personable one amidst a sea of more and more grim macho poses, wasn’t essentially a shock when it occurred within the season 7 premiere. It had already occurred within the comics in the very same style a couple of years earlier, proper right down to Glenn pathetically calling out the title of his spouse between baseball bat blows to the cranium. However what ought to’ve been the energized emergence of Negan, a beloved dangerous man that had been constructed up for a whole season and one performed by the effortlessly charismatic Jeffrey Dean Morgan, was met with vast distaste. The present that had declared open season by itself solid had lastly gone too far.

Had the wool lastly been pulled away from the viewers’s eyes? The distinction between Glenn’s demise and the deaths of Hickok and Bonpensiero is the latter two had meant one thing for the opposite characters, and one thing for the story at giant. It reverberated throughout the present in a means that was felt extra deeply than guts on the bottom. Other than some indignant characters, The Strolling Useless would discover no overhaul within the wake of its supreme second of barbarism. By killing off a mainstay for the reason that finish of the primary episode, it had come full circle and wound up empty-handed.

The character of comedian e book storytelling, even one as finite as Kirkman’s (it ended on concern 193 in 2019), is cyclical. As elements of longer story arcs or long-running collection, returns to the established order are crucial each occasionally to permit for brand spanking new readers to leap in. However what in case your established order, like The Strolling Useless’s, is constructed on the concept that there actually isn’t one? That even a return to normalcy means layers of intense grief and drudgery and little hope that something will get higher?

Within the demise of Glenn, no matter magic trick the collection had been pulling off was laid naked to the viewers. It had at all times been that means and would at all times be this fashion; there isn’t any actual shock or payoff. The characters you want are doomed by what looks like a dice-roll strategy to their fates. The Strolling Useless season 8 poster promised “ALL OUT WAR” between Rick’s and Negan’s teams, a dramatic endgame to the climax of the collection thus far. However viewers have been properly accustomed to its endings. Even a titanic battle between the avenging stalwart protagonist and its most heinous villain held little promise that the story’s nature would change.

Picture: Jace Downs/AMC

After Glenn’s demise, what ought to’ve been a story victory lap turned a time killer between bushwhacks. The largest distinction between these later parts and its earlier seasons is that extra human factions are launched. This builds the pretense the present has managed to evolve from small teams scrambling for a foothold in a “walker”-infested East Coast to one thing resembling the return of group in a chaotic world. It might be a succesful change if the present hadn’t beforehand relied a lot on sweeping the legs out from below itself.

In the meantime, a derivative collection, Worry the Strolling Useless, chugged alongside. In a couple of years, it could be joined by The Strolling Useless: World Past and Tales of the Strolling Useless, neither of which provided something all too completely different from the unique collection. They’d even commerce off varied solid members in a Marvel Cinematic Universe-esque try to supply a watchable part for these hesitant to commit extra time to one more aimless zombie collection. The tough features that had made The Strolling Useless appear so gritty and nasty had devolved. In season 9, Rick was carried off in a mysterious helicopter to elements unknown, a inventive alternative that mystified audiences till they learn that he was to star in one more spinoff.

It was the final word shortchange, stopping the ultimate few seasons from ever reaching a comeback. For those who couldn’t have a correct send-off of Rick, the one character round for the reason that first episode and the spine of the collection, then what was the purpose? Why was it nonetheless going if solid members survived on the premise of who was getting a tie-in present developed? That’s not an exaggeration: Surviving into the ultimate episode are Daryl (getting a derivative,) Michonne (equally disappeared from the present and now becoming a member of Rick in his spinoff,) Negan (getting a derivative,) and Maggie (accompanying Negan, the person who violently clubbed her husband to demise, in his spinoff. What an odd couple!). If The Strolling Useless is doing nothing however priming its stars for expanded-universe hijinks, then why does its ending matter in any respect? Even when one may nonetheless discover solace in its shock deaths, characters being protected by sheer franchising is, at greatest, a betrayal of what was as soon as its most potent approach.

Its existence now feels as archaic because the rotting undead that tempo round in it, a reminder of a collection that in its nascent years, whereas removed from hopeful, remained vibrantly grotesque. In the long run, the one factor The Strolling Useless couldn’t survive was its personal success.