God knows I wasn’t. I stopped watching The Walking Dead in 2017, somewhere in the middle of Season 7, just as Jeffrey Dean Morgan was making his mark as Negan. I can’t tell you precisely why I did, but it was definitely a combination of all the reasons you already know. It started becoming a little repetitive. It became less and less about the zombies. The gratuitous violence was getting dull. Glenn’s death was utterly unnecessary. But worst of all, the series felt like it was slowly becoming a parody of itself. (You know, the kind they do on SNL.)
It’s been so long since The Walking Dead first premiered (Barack Obama had just finished his first year as President, there were so few Marvel movies – three – that they hadn’t even started referring to them as a “universe,” The Mentalist was huge, and everyone was angry at how Lost ended) that you may have forgotten just how big the show was. It occupied the upper echelons of television, right alongside Breaking Bad and Mad Men. It defined watercooler chatter. Every week, all anyone wanted to talk about was what batshit crazy thing happened to Rick and his wayward posse.
And rightly so.
Back to the Beginning
That pilot, directed by Frank Darabont, is easily one of the best episodes of television of all time. The dialogue is sparse. There aren’t any overwrought flashbacks for the sake of exposition. Everything… everything… that you learn about Rick, and Morgan, and Duane, and Amy, is character through action. It is such confident storytelling that there isn’t a single jump scare in the whole episode. Darabont doesn’t force you into a reaction. Instead, he does horror by creating an underlying sense of dread that keeps you constantly on edge.
But this was all before the spin-offs, before the tension of the show became reliant on shocking deaths and overt gore, and before the “walkers” ended up being a mere inconvenience as opposed to a genuine threat.
So, yeah, I noped out of The Walking Dead at about the same time you did.
Not Quite the End
I loved The Walking Dead and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my weekly fix of the death and doom zombie variety hour. And so, when I heard that series was coming back for an extended last and final (this time, it’s really the end) season (for reals), I decided to try and jump back in. Now I didn’t start where I left off. No one’s got that kind of time. I figured I’d just put on the first episode of Season 11 and try to figure things out as I went along.
And you know what? I absolutely could figure things out. I may have missed about 65 episodes, but The Walking Dead is still The Walking Dead. Maggie and Negan are still at each other’s throats. Humanity’s prospects are still oppressively bleak. And there’s an undead horde that’s always on the horizon.
That said, all of the trademarks that made the show great are still there. The opening of the episode, in which our heroes stage a breathless raid on an army barracks is absolutely thrilling. By now, these massive set pieces must be second nature to the production team who have never failed to come up with new and creative ways to shock and thrill us. And this was a welcome reminder of what made the show so great in the first place.
It must also be said that no one is phoning it in. Other shows that have gone on for as long as The Walking Dead have sometimes fallen victim to tedium. So much so that you can see it in the actor’s eyes. Not here. Every performance is incredibly engrossing and, despite the show’s fantastical promise, completely grounded.
There is also real growth for many of these characters. Negan, for example, seems to have evolved from evil, villainous bastard, to a weirdly conflicted anti-hero. But unlike those Fast and Furious movies, there still seems to be consequences to his past crimes. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a delight. And his evolution is handled with real care and nuance.
The Long Goodbye
This extended final season – that’s 24 bloody episodes from now until 2022 – feels like the best time to jump back into The Walking Dead. I know. I know. It sounds like crazy talk. But if there’s one thing The Walking Dead always did well, it was crafting what felt like self-contained seasons of horror. Yes, there are ongoing story and character arcs, and plenty of loose threads to tie up, but as someone who is returning to the series after four years, I can confidently say that I didn’t feel lost. Not for a second.
I chalk that up as a testament to the fact that the series never lost sight of its overarching themes. Despite some narrative missteps along the way, The Walking Dead remains committed to exploring all of humanity’s darkest sides in the face of armageddon. How we survive, what we choose to sacrifice, and how we reconcile those choices with our own personal moral code has always been at the center of this series.
So much so that this last season couldn’t have landed at a better time. I mean, haven’t we all just lived through an end of the world of sorts? Which probably means that the series is now at its most relatable. Though I can’t quite recall if Daryl ever shot anyone in the face for toilet paper.
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