The Walking Dead Turns Into the Most Anticlimactic Cliffhangers

The Current Season has been doing really well so far. In fact, I plan to write a review about the first half of the season after the midseason finale. But I thought I'd write about this particular episode after reading a spoiler about this show a while back. I'm pretty sure everyone who has followed The Walking Dead news knows what I'm talking about. If not, read only if you're not following the show.

That's right, I'm talking about the Episode 5 of Season 9, "What Comes After" of the lead character, Andrew Lincoln. This season was confirmed to be Andrew Lincoln's last season, and I was going to give up watching The Walking Dead after this.

Of course, I wasn't looking forward to seeing this episode. The episodes of the current season leading to this episode were very great, and way better than any season I can remember from the recent past. But a show's got to end at some point, and when there was no turning point, the showrunners may have had enough. There were many factions running instead of Rick, and they can easily continue like nothing happened in the next episode. Only Michonne ("Danai Gurira") should truly be affected. Judith is just a toddler, so she will know in the future.

So instead of a turning point, we get "shocking" cliffhangers that make you question, OMG!

Yes, the show does end with Rick ("Andrew Lincoln") dying if that's what you're wondering. After he has an accident in the previous episode where a stick went though his stomach, he meets a horde of walkers. With loss of blood and rapid shortness in breathing, Rick tries to sway the walkers away from camp while somehow staying awake. Once he reaches a bridge, he risks his own life and destroys it with dynamite instead of asking his friends to risk their lives for him.

The episode was very heartwarming, and it was filled with moments that were perfect for a final episode of a character. It could even have been the final episode of the show. The creators went through all that trouble to bring back the actors that played the characters of Shane, Sasha and Hershel. Those moments reflect most of the things Rick had went through from Season 1. The creators also created great scenes that felt like Rick was about to visit Heaven. Even people who watches it with me without following it were asking me if The Walking Dead was ending. The creators built the final scene where Rick blows up the dynamite as a truly shocking and emotional scene for the characters in the show as well.

But the real question to ask is whether Rick stays dead. Because he's not! The first cliffhanger was "shocking", especially because I had already known that Andrew Lincoln was leaving. The scene involves Jadis ("Pollyanna McIntosh") finding Rick's body in the water while she was on route to an unmentioned place via a helicopter. Rick was supposed to stay dead, not picked up by Jadis. And since Jadis made her exit 2 episodes ago, I didn't think she'd reappear. 

So Jadis picks Rick up, so even if this is Andrew Lincoln's last episode, Rick might still be alive. If Andrew Lincoln had decided to stay on, things would have been worse, definitely yes. But still, keeping the character Rick alive after going through all the difficulty in killing him off, all the production costs and CGI, and bringing back all the past characters, was not a wise decision to make. The final move of bringing him back in Andrew Lincoln's last episode is not to be forgiven.

I guess this is good bye to Anne / Jadis as well. Jadis was an original character that was used for the last 2 seasons, until her name was integrated to Anne, a comic book counterpart.

On the bright side, the second cliffhanger proves to be a solid one. I was thinking about who might take up the mantle of a new leader, if there has to be one, but I couldn't think about any. With Rick Grimes and Carl Grimes ("Chandler Riggs") both dead, there are many choices running around. There is no real need of a leader. But just in case, we just found our best choice for the future, Judith Grimes.

Judith is the perfect character to keep until the show's end. She can stay on the sidelines, come on the frontlines, and eventually do anything the creator demands. She can be the lead, imagine that: a young lead. Carl almost did it. So can she.

Who else is there to adopt the western detective style with a hat. The adopted daughter of Rick, Judith Grimes comes into action in the end. Her real father Shane was also a detective. In the cliffhanger, she uses a Magnum pistol and shoots zombies to help out strangers, just like Rick would. She also picks up Rick's and Carl's hat just to prove a point, and when asked who she is, since the audience is puzzled, she says "Judith. Judith Grimes." Judith Grimes becomes the successor of the Grimes family. This should be among one of the best scenes in The Walking Dead.

1. Speaking of Judith ("Chloe Garcia-Frizzi", "Cailey Fleming"), people who had seen the past few episodes would wonder about her age. Now, Judith was just a toddler while she was playing with Rick and Michonne, but in the cliffhanger they do a "time jump" and she grows up, and the actor changes.
2. There are various serial plot threads that continue from previous episodes to the future episodes. Those segments could have been removed, and this episode should have been made episodic.
3. Will the whisperers appear finally? I've been waiting for them, but all I've been seeing are walkers. I'm starting to get annoyed.
4. What's going to happen to Negan now? He's been in lockup from the start.
5. The bridge that was destroyed was the one that Rick had worked to build with The Saviors. Will its destruction mean anything with the peace Rick was trying to make with The Saviors?
6. Will there be a civil war

Review

Season 9, Episode 5: 3/4