Next week is the season finale of ‘The Walking Dead’ – but before that, many characters head ‘East’ and into mortal danger…
Carol (Melissa McBride) has left Alexandria, seemingly driven by the inner-turmoil of being both a savagely efficient killer and a woman who was once deeply-religious and tired of the killing. Her friends fear for her safety and set out in pursuit. But Daryl (Norman Reedus) has already departed the compound, in search of Dwight – the survivor (and now member of the ‘Saviors’) who killed Denise with an arrow from Daryl’s stolen crossbow. If Daryl hadn’t let him live, Denise and others might have survived and it’s a scale the biker is determined to rectify once and for all.
But as the various searches go on, things go from bad to worse. Maggie collapses in Alexandria with complications from her pregnancy and while some of the searchers make it back to Alexandria, some do not. It seems the Saviors (and their leader, the as-yet-unseen Negan) will have a collection of prisoners to use as target-practice… and by episode’s end a fateful gun-shot rings out…
The real problem with The Walking Dead at the moment is not the performances – which remain top-notch – nor the sense of foreboding deliberately created as we head into next weekend’s feature-length finale and all that entails (or should that be entrails?). The hiccup is that our heroes aren’t behaving like the heroes we know. Recent weeks have seen them become pro-active murderers (maybe for pragmatic reasons, but certainly morally-questionable ones) and for all their experiences, are seemingly devolving into people who make decisions based on the needs of the script. However, that’s because the STORY demands that they act in a rash manner, which in turn creates the risky and unfortunate situations they find themselves in…
Melissa McBride – just give this actress every tv award going and be done with it – gives Carol’s encounter with the Saviors an almost mythic, Unforgiven quality… a warrior who’s looking for any way NOT to unleash devastation on those who would seek to do her harm but unleashing it wholesale when necessary. Though the encounter isn’t completely resolved, it’s one of the show’s best story-threads. The only quibble is timing. One can argue that Carol’s departure conveniently creates a situation where her ‘family’ would obviously feel the need to go after her, but it’s at a time when Alexandria knows that it might be facing an onslaught from the Saviors and so it’s unlikely Carol would have picked this moment to leave (despite her recent emotional fracturing) or that so many of the town’s senior warriors would leave the compound to bring her back knowing that it’s essentially the B-Team standing guard.
It’s all set-up for the ninety-minute ‘Last Day on Earth‘ finale on Sunday, but ti sometimes feels like prelude rather than stand-alone greatness. But, yes. The very final scene was absolutely guaranteed to be a gigantic ‘WTF?‘ moment with Daryl being shot at point-blank range and his blood splattering the screen. While the shooting definitely saw Daryl getting more than a flesh wound, it seems unlikely that the show is killing off one of their most beloved characters, especially at the hands of an irritant bad-guy rather than a big-bad. The ‘You’ll be alright‘, spoken over a black screen might not actually be aimed at Daryl, but it is likely there to stop or delay an immediate riot by Daryl Dixonites across the twittersphere.
However this coming weekend… there’s no doubt there will be blood and the series will come out swinging with more high-profile casualties.
8/10
