It’s that time of year again, when The Walking Dead finally stops showing us what seems like an endless amount of filler episodes and, ya know, gets to the freaking point. The Season Seven finale will on Sunday night, which will be our last look at Rick vs. Negan until roughly October, when the whole cycle starts over again.
If it sounds like I’m a tad bitter about this season, it’s because I am. Listen, I love The Walking Dead. The first season was excellent television, even if it seems like a long time ago now. There have been great moments since then, too. I loved it so much that I immediately got my hands on every single issue of the comic book and burned through almost 100 issues in a matter of days, and have stayed caught up to this day. Then came the Telltale point-and-click adventure video games, which I also devoured as soon as each chapter was released. I even read the first couple novels that focused on The Governor and his backstory. Yes, there was a time when I couldn’t get enough of The Walking Dead.
Times have changed. The last couple seasons have been painful, with Season Six essentially being a never-ending journey just to finally — finally! — introduce Negan, one of the best villain characters in comic history. And Negan, played excellently by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, did arrive. He arrived with bravado and charisma (and a cleaner vocabulary than his comicbook counterpart, and he brought along Lucille. Then, in a moment that would have made allllllllll the waiting worth it, The Walking Dead kicked their fans square in the crotch with the most shameless cliffhanger ending in recent television history.
Season Seven started with a bang (well, two bangs) as we finally got to see that scene from the comics. You know the one. Since then, though, it’s been a long, slow, prodding death march to now. Every week was just a slightly different version of Negan getting his way and everyone else can just deal. Or die. Now we finally are at the point where Rick is trying to gather an army and fight back against the Saviors. While he may ultimately win the battle for post-zombie apocalypse Washington, D.C., it may be too late for The Walking Dead to win me back as a loyal viewer.
Here’s my predictions for the season finale, which (full disclosure) I will be PVRing so I can watch WrestleMania or Sunday Night Baseball.
No One Important Dies
I’m going to get this one out of the way right off the bat (pun intended). I don’t think we’ll see a major character die in this season finale. As you’ll read later, my definition of “major character” matters here. Of course we won’t see Rick or Carl die. They are bullet proof. Then there is the 1A tier of characters, like Michonne, Daryl, Maggie, and Ezekiel. They are all safe. The show is already suffering from a lack a character development, especially since fan favorites like Glenn and Abraham are gone. They need to make fans care more about who is actually left before they kill them off and replace them with more fresh faces.
Photo by Gene Page/AMC
