Kevin Card

*Let it be known that on the seventh day the Lord did rest, and proclaimed: SPOILERS THROUGH OUT THE LAND!*

Hello again WordPress readers and fellow Walking Dead fanatics, Kevin Card here bringing you my review of the season 6 finale of The Walking Dead. It’s been an epic season, the best the Walking Dead has had too date. With that fact in mind, we’ve had quite a bit of build up to this episode, and in many ways I did feel it was an awesome episode. I just feel really ripped off by the ending. I’ll get more into that later, but first I just want to thank my readers for sticking around through my self publishing ventures. You guys are my main inspiration to do this stuff! Now then, onto the show.

Plot summary:
The episode starts off with Rick and the main members of the group leaving Alexandria to get Maggie over to the Hilltop because Maggie desperately needs to see a doctor. We see Carl arguing with Enid about whether or not Enid is coming to help out on the trip, and the arguing culminates with Carl locking Enid into an armory closet. “How am I supposed to live with myself if something happens to you?!” Cried Enid at Carl from the closet. “Just survive somehow,” sighed Carl before walking away. As Rick’s group leaves Alexandria they encounter more Saviors out on the road where Rick is letting his new found ego do the talking for him by treating the Saviors as a mere nuisance. We also see how Morgan manages to find Carol and assists her. As the episode progresses, we see more and more traps being laid out by The Saviors to play mind games with Rick’s group. With each new trap, Rick’s confidence gets whittled down further to the point of desperation.

Meanwhile, the lone Savior who survived Carol’s attack on that truck from the previous episode and tortures Carol by slowly shooting her. Morgan eventually intervenes and breaks his vow of never killing again by killing the lone savior to save Carol. Eugene tries to act as a decoy by taking the RV so Rick and tbe others can go out on foot to take Maggie to the Hilltop, but they all get cornered in the forest. Once the group was cornered and fully reunited, Negan is finally introduced. Rick and his group are now a nervous wreck to see Negan talking down and threatening to beat them holding a barbed wire baseball bat named “Lucille”. There are things I definitely enjoyed about this episode, and things I didn’t enjoy.

What I enjoyed:
I enjoyed a lot of the dialogue in this episode as I feel it was really well thought out and delivered nicely at the end of the episode. “Treat your friends like it’s your last day on Earth!” Said the Savior with the goattee to Rick near the first trap, and later said after he hung that random survivor off the bridge. The scenery and atmosphere were very powerful and symbolic through most of the episode when we were focused on Rick’s group, especially at all of the traps and how things got worse for Rick and his group as the sun was setting. I enjoyed seeing Abraham talk too Sasha about the possibility of having children, but that’s also a huge red flag since they only started dating. With that statement, Abraham just signaled himself to be killed off by the writers with that statement. I liked how Eugene offered to sacrifice himself for the group to get away. Also, I loved how the pacing in that scene with Carol and the Savior was so tense, it’s like that Savior was channeling his inner Emporer Palpatine with how he enjoyed shooting Carol so slowly. Plus, I loved how Carol laughed after accepting her impending death. Lastly, the last ten minutes of the episode when Negan was introduced were phenomenal! Negan had the best introduction of any WD villian to date, and the best monolog the show has ever had. Aside from that, there are things I could have done without.

What I didn’t Enjoy:
The fact that we need to wait until October to find out who Negan killed with Lucille! I’m guessing the writers either wanted to keep us guessing, or hadn’t decided who to kill off yet. It’s obvious to me Carl never really learned how to treat a woman right judging by the fact that he locked Enid in a freaking closet! Things were more or less average for the focus on Morgan and Carol, aside from the climax with the Savior. I could have done without that scene of Morgan killing that walker who hung himself off of that radio tower. I also feel those scenes with Morgan and Carol could have had better dialogue for a season finale (like helping Carol with her struggle on never killing again). Lastly, I feel that the pacing was too slow until we got to the end of the episode. I expected a bunch of character deaths for this episode (“Red Wedding GOT style”), but we got an annoying cliff hanger ending instead. This will be a tough ending to top for The Walking Dead, even if I did say “Fuck you AMC” on Facebook last night over my frustrations at the cliffhanger ending.

-KCard