Why Did The Walking Dead Wait Until Its Final Season to Get Good Again?

Over the course of 12 lengthy years, The Walking Dead TV collection has had many highs and plenty of extra lows. Now, because the venerable zombie apocalypse present approaches its finish, the eleventh and ultimate season has been as constantly robust as TWD has been in years. While it might appear odd—and, frankly, irritating—for the present to all of a sudden get its collective shit collectively proper on the finish, it’s no thriller, as a result of the reply comes proper from Robert Kirkman’s unique Walking Dead comics.

No spoiler warning is required. I’ve tried to keep away from studying a lot concerning the comics in any respect so I wouldn’t always be evaluating the present to its supply materials. However, when the comedian ended again in 2019, I realized sufficient to get a common sense of the place the story would wrap up. The reply is the Commonwealth, a metropolis—seemingly the one metropolis on the earth of TWD—that has managed to return to a pre-apocalyptic society. It has a authorities, cash, a high-functioning hospital, file shops, and ice cream stands, together with near-total safety from zombies and post-apocalyptic assholes by a well-armed standing military.

I can’t communicate to the explanation why Kirkman selected to shake up his narrative by bringing an idea so acquainted but completely overseas to the narrative, however I believe it was to shake up the collection’ storytelling after a decade-and-a-half-plus of Rick Grimes and his crew battling a large and more and more lethal assortment of these aforementioned post-apocalyptic assholes. The Commonwealth is totally completely different from the foes which have come earlier than. It’s not made up of cannibals, bullies, or loony zombie cosplayers; it’s made of individuals, like Alexandria or any real-world city, albeit with troopers sporting Stormtrooper-esque armor. These individuals aren’t scrambling to get by, and the Alexandrians have completely nothing price taking anyway, so there’s no motive for the 2 communities to get into one among TWD’s conventional fights to the demise.

This has allowed The Walking Dead (the TV collection, but additionally presumably the comics) to utterly shake issues up by sticking its characters again in an approximation of the true world. It’s nonetheless wild to see these characters, who we’ve seen having to endure unspeakable hardships, brutality, and flesh-eating zombies for greater than a decade, all of a sudden going to a file retailer and shopping for an album, awaiting surgical procedure in a hospital full of contemporary provides, and, most surreally, sitting in a ready room with a espresso desk with magazines on it. The most banal moments of season 11 have additionally been a few of TWD’s strongest, not least as a result of it’s much more surreal for the characters to seek out themselves on this new/previous world. It’s a traditional fish out of water story. (Or ought to I say fish all of a sudden thrown again into the water?)

But the best factor concerning the introduction of the Commonwealth has been all the brand new storytelling alternatives it’s introduced. By shaking up the setting so completely, The Walking Dead has been in a position to put its characters in new conditions, and has taken each alternative to take action. In a metropolis with politics, you’ll be able to have a political thriller or a conspiracy story. In a city with upper-class residents and money, you’ll be able to ship them on a heist. In a setting that’s lastly settled down into some semblance of normalcy, you’ll be able to marvel who killed anyone and why with out the solutions all the time being, “Practically anybody” and “who cares?”

Furthermore, the Commonwealth storyline has managed to upend the survivors-vs.-other-group-of-survivors conflicts which have dominated a lot of the collection. The Commonwealth isn’t an “Other.” It’s 50,000 individuals, most of whom are pleased to be dwelling in peace and security. It’s the place many Alexandrians have moved over the past eight episodes, together with Carol, Ezekiel, Daryl, Rosita, and extra. While the federal government that runs the Commonwealth is extremely classist and elitist and the troopers greater than a little bit fascist, the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants haven’t any ailing will in direction of our heroes in any respect.

Of course, the people who do bear ailing will to our heroes additionally occur to be those in energy, which is why the brewing battle lastly bubbled over in final Sunday’s episode. There’s Governor Pamela Milton, outraged that revolution appears to be brewing within the metropolis. There’s her son Sebastian, aka Kingsley St. Buffingsworth of the Cape Cod Buffingworths, who abuses his station, particularly on the expense of those that threaten it. And then, in fact, there’s Deputy Governor Lance Hornsby, who’s been secretly “resettling” members of the Commonwealth who “don’t do their part” to unknown areas and fates, who’s been funneling cash and weapons to some secret mission the federal government isn’t conscious of however is sort of actually nefarious. Oh, and within the ultimate moments of the mid-season finale, he straight-up conquered Alexandria, Hilltop, and Oceanside (in what appears to be a extremely misguided seize for energy). He used banners and every thing.

When The Walking Dead returns within the fall, the Alexandrians received’t be preventing the Commonwealth. Maggie, Daryl, Rosita, Aaron, Gabriel, Lydia, and Negan will likely be preventing Hornsby and his many, many minions. Meanwhile, Ezekiel, Eugene, Yumiko, Magna, Connie, and Kelly are all contained in the Commonwealth, fomenting revolution and on the brink of overthrow its autocracy. (Carol is presently serving as Hornsby’s agent, and he or she’s going to mess him up good.) Basically, these two teams will each be preventing the Man, a battle I’ve by no means, ever seen on the present.

After 12 years, I can’t think about watching the collection finale of The Walking Dead and being left wanting extra. And lord is aware of even season 11 hasn’t been excellent, particularly when it began. But if the present manages to exit reminding us why it was as soon as one of the crucial common TV collection ever, zombie or in any other case, effectively, I wouldn’t thoughts that in any respect.

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