SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 6 FINALE FOLLOW!
By: Tyler Miller
After a season of waiting and being teased multiple times over the past year about Negan’s imminent arrival, the time has finally come for the big man to step into the limelight. Negan has arrived on The Walking Dead.
The most interesting part of last night’s episode came at the end, so I’ll try to keep the recap of everything leading up to that brief. The episode started off with Morgan finding the horse that was lost last week and taking it to go find Carol. It wasn’t too long before he found her though, in a town curled up on the steps of a building slowly bleeding out. He patched her up and tried to convince her to come back with him, but she simply refused to go. As she explained to him, she simply can’t kill and doesn’t want to kill anyone. Going back to Alexandria will cause her to have to do this because she wants to protect everyone else.
Carol walks off, leaving Morgan alone in the room. He goes outside to kill a walker and returns to see that she’s gone off on her own which leads to him chasing after her again, eventually comes across her crucifix telling him he’s on the right path. We see Carol come across a walker that she kills partly by ripping its face off (awesome!) and then stabbing it, only to then be tackled by the Savior who was following her last week. He gets the upper hand on her and proceeds to shoot her in the arm because he wants her to suffer and die slowly just like his friends that she killed.
Carol knows that she’s going to die, and she’s okay with that. Of course her torturer doesn’t approve of that, so he shoots her in the leg.At this point Carol is so far gone that she doesn’t want to live anymore. She simply wants this guy to kill her and end everything. Right as he’s about to, Morgan shows up and holds him at gunpoint with the gun Rick gave him before they separated. He tells the Savior to just put his gun down and he can walk away from this. The Savior essentially says screw that and right as he’s about to shoot Carol, Morgan surprises everyone and unloads on him.
Morgan goes to put pressure on Carol’s wounds and channels his inner Eastman, telling her that she isn’t going to die and that she can come back from where she is now. Then two men approach them and offer to help them out and take them back to their camp. At first Morgan seems hesitant, but he agrees and their story is over.
Over with the Rick and the main plot, the rest of the main crew in Alexandria is packing up and hopping into the RV to get Maggie to the doctor at the Hilltop. This consists of Rick, Carl, Abraham, Sasha, Eugene, and Aaron. Rick insists that some of them stay behind, but they all go anyway. So they head off on a road trip that quickly turns south.
On the road they come to a roadblock of a few Saviors led by actor Steven Ogg (better known as Trevor Philips). He offers the half of everything deal to Rick again, who refuses of course. Trev then poses the question of whether or not it’s Rick’s last day on earth, or someone in his group’s. Rick’s still confident as always though, so they ignore him and go back to find a different path. This path turns out to be blocked as well by even more Saviors than before. They find another blockade that’s a chain of walkers, but this one is different. One of the walkers has some of Michonne’s dreads on it while another has one of Daryl’s arrows in it. It’s at this point that the group realizes the situation is MUCH worse than they thought.
They get past that blockade and find another with at least two dozen Saviors waiting for them, forcing them to find another path. The last one is blocked by a wall of logs that gets set on fire after the Saviors hang a man from an overpass to scare our group. It’s like a damn house of horrors for them, as they’re being messed with psychologically by the Saviors and it’s working pretty damn well. They’re truly neck deep up shit creek with their mouths wide open (Abraham’s best line of the episode). Night falls and Eugene realizes that the Saviors are simply waiting for the RV, not the group, so he volunteers to be bait while the others get Maggie to the Hilltop. He says his goodbyes and gives Rick the location of the foundry him and Abraham found.
The others go into the woods when they start to hear the Saviors whistling. They make a break for it, only to find themselves surrounded by A SHIT TON of Saviors and a captured Eugene. Our group is screwed. Trev tells them to get on their knees and brings out Michonne, Glenn, Daryl, and Rosita, adding them to the lineup as well. Then the big man makes his appearance.
Negan is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and he absolutely kills it in the short amount of time that he’s on screen. He owns the scene and makes it known that Rick’s group is at his mercy. Negan is clearly psychotic and evil, but he’s also charming and likable in a way that only Negan can. The entire time that he’s talking to the group, the tension is just rising and rising as we wait for him to beat the holy hell out of someone. How does he decide? Eenie-meenie-minie-moe of course. Eventually he settles on someone and this happens.
He proceeds to beat them over and over with his bat Lucille, as blood covers the camera before it cuts to black and we hear the screams of the group and the sound of the bat crushing the victim’s skull. And the episode ends…
Now I know that the big talking point about this episode is the way that things wrapped up (or didn’t) this season. Everywhere you look on the internet, you’ll find that a vast majority of people that watched last night’s episode are PISSED, and it’s hard to blame them for feeling that way. This is a major moment in the comics that fans have been looking forward to seeing play out on the show. It’s been hyped up and teased all season long. Everyone was prepared for someone to die and was looking forward to finding out who it was.
The POV shot of the beating is great, but the fact that the victim wasn’t shown afterwards is what pissed people off. No one wants to wait until the fall to find out who it was. The emotional impact won’t be the same, and on top of that it may possibly be spoiled before then due to set leaks and cast announcements. On top of that, it’s yet another cliffhanger about someone’s death in a season that already had two already (although I wouldn’t necessarily call Daryl’s from last week one since it was clear he wasn’t dead, but everyone else does). This all reeks of AMC trying to get as many viewers as possible for the season 7 premiere who are going to want to find out who Negan killed.
Other thoughts:
- Jeffrey Dean Morgan was the perfect person to play Negan. I just cannot stress that enough. I’m REALLY looking forward to seeing more of him next season.
- Looks like Morgan is going to help bring Carol out of her little funk that she’s in now. Maybe she’ll end up going by his philosophy of no killing?
- Speaking of that, Morgan killed someone! With a gun! It’s really going to be interesting to see how this affects him next season.
- Comic fans will know where those guys who helped Morgan can Carol are from, and I’m hyped to see their leader! Bring on Ezekiel and Shiva!
- I don’t think we’ve seen Rick as terrified and broken as he was in that final scene. Andrew Lincoln sure knows how to bring out the emotion in Rick.
Honestly, I’m not pissed about the ending of the episode. I’m really not sure how I feel about it. Part of me is disappointed, but at the same time I’m also excited to find out who it is. Even with me feeling this way, I still understand why everyone is annoyed and frustrated with the way things played out. I may end up feeling the same way as them after I think about it some more. It was definitely an interesting note to end the season on though. AMC is going to have to work hard to earn back the trust and respect of all the fans they pissed off. For the most part though, I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and am looking forward to season 7 later this year.
TheComfySpot 