Spoilers The Walking Dead - Season 9 discussion and spoilers

The Walking Dead
Season 9 premiere - "A New Beginning"

Well, its here--the 9th season of The Walking Dead, still one of the most watched fantasy series on TV, and with all of this past summer's announcements, there should be a boatload of drama and history reshaping the series going forward...if its all justified and not just for shock or jumping from one "Big Bad" to another.

Rick & Michonne: The perfect set-up of Happily Ever After, with Michonne's idea of a charter is in line with her hopes to build after talking to / being influenced by Deanna in season 6.

Daryl (to Oceanside's Cyndy): "I had friends that wanted to be here--they didn't make it" probably refers to Beth, Tyresse and the other pre-ASZ characters.

So Daryl resents the core group split up, and looks back to the early days when they could "do anything." His choice to return to the Hilltop is--of course--still building on his support of Maggie and the coming rift between the original group.

Carol / The Kingdom: Not a surprise that she and Ezekiel are a couple (and a nice continuity / reference about preferring Ezekiel's corniness to her late husband Ed), but I'm sure a million Carol+Daryl shippers just howled in protest. Sort of feel like his declaration of unending love will come back to haunt Carol...

Maggie: Despite her "show them" threat in last season's finale, she seems to be back to friendly interaction with Michonne and Rick....well, until Ken (the young man who was bitten) died. Ken's mother blaming Maggie for his death--and making some suggestions of disparity in the allocation of resources with the Sanctuary was the opening Gregory needed to twist the emotional screws of Ken's parents. I guessed he would try to set her up..but its good to see her able to handle herself only a few months after giving birth.

Gregory reminding her of why she cannot go back to Alexandria (Negan) seems like someone will try to release Negan (for Maggie to kill), only for the villain to make his escape to the Whisperers.

Finally, Gregory's execution....its about time. The reaction & look on Rick's face was priceless.

Ex-Saviors: The seeds of internal breakdown are in place with Laura "ratting out" Arat and another ex-Savior over the walker scarecrow (and the "Saviors Save Us" graffiti). Then there's Regina, who now walks with a limp thanks to Rosita shooting her in the season 8 finale. Unless she's more interested in a real life, I do not see her being so forgiving.

Jadis / Ann & Father Gabriel: Interesting moment between the two, with his interpretation of the evolutionary chart as Intelligent Design and her still considering herself an artist.

NOTE:
Nasty scene: the mother spider and endless spiderlings crawling out of the walker's head. Nasty and itchy.

 

(raises hand) I'm one of the million...but now that I've seen them together I can't complain too much. I mainly want see Carol happy, and if the king does it for her, fine.

I grinned and cheered out loud. Maggie rules!

 

Did something happen now? This show is going to feel empty once Rick leaves.

 

The gang finally made it to D.C., though it was sad to see the Capitol building in ruins.

The Civil War exhibit in the museum, foreshadowing?

 

That will probably be in a few months with the way things are going.

 

Regarding the spiders in the walker... about time something like that is seen. It makes sense creatures would live inside those rotting bodies. I'm surprised we haven't seen it sooner.

Gregory... about time. I love the actor, but the character had no redeeming quality.

I LOVE the new title sequence. Very comic book/video game like, and looks like clues to what is coming are peppered in there, like the helicopter. That is one thing I have been curious about... who controls that and where are they?

 

You would hope Jadis might share that information with someone, since she obviously knows who they are.

At this point in the story, several years into the outbreak, the “older” walkers should have already fallen to pieces and been consumed by bacteria, fungus and insects. Think of what happened in 28 Days Later.

 

This is where the timeline of the series must be questioned. Some sources have the entire series--from the pilot to this episode running only a little over two years (and hand waving Chandler Riggs' growth over eight), and if that's accurate, I doubt the Capitol building would be in such a state of disrepair.

I caught that, and agree--all of the cracks are already there: Daryl and Maggie vs Rick and Michonne, some ex-Saviors not on the same page, Ken's parents..who knows what they might try out of fear of Maggie in the wake of her executing Gregory. ..and Carol? She's so independent that its difficult to know what side she will fall on--if at all.

 

Mostly just setting up and establishing the show's newish setting, but I enjoyed it. I knew Gregory's fate for a few years now because of the comics, but damn that was still an amazing scene.

 

Yes, it was amazing and a shock actually in the service of the story.

 

That's me as well.

As for Maggie... not really a fan of her at this point. She kind of gets on my nerves.

Could be, given where things are at. Negan is still very much in the game. Going by what happened and how he reacted. He's happy, he thinks it'll work in his favor. It's another thing to factor in this season.

 

Ok, someone needs to photoshop Rick and the rest into Union and Confederate uniforms.

 

Can't help you on that score. Maggie's my other TWD crush, so I'm automatically on her team.

 

Ah. I used to like her for what it's worth. But she's just gotten too unlikable for me to cheer on at this point.

 

I can see that. In fact, I bet it's the things you don't like about her character that I find make her more likeable. We're probably coming at this from different directions.

 

Could be. I can see that she's trying to help out her group of people. But it's very mercenary and rather (for lack of a better way of putting it...) bitchy (and I say that about Negan as well sometimes).

 

Yep, that's it. What you see as bitchy I see as no-nonsense. It's the same attitude that endeared me to Carol once upon a time...

 

As far as season premieres go, that wasn't too bad. Actually got me "feeling" the series a bit more again.

I liked the look and tone of it after the time jump and them taking on a more agricultural society with taking the horticulture relics from the museum. Guess I'm against trend, and kind of like this "darker" Maggie, I get sort of where she is coming from with it and it's about damn time they stopped trusting Greggory. Hell, he survived the intervening 18 months or so between seasons?

I really don't know how the show is going to look/feel without Rick moving forward, but a decent episode overall.

 

There are some quibbles I could make with the episode, owing to the things shows do for the sake of action and drama.

But when they're in the museum and walk over the glass floor/ceiling there shouldn't have been any danger whatsoever of the transparent material breaking. Because, well, it isn't glass! In cases like that it's much more likely, if not legally required, for it to have been lexan or some other kind of polymer. I'd think OSHA, local safety bureaus, insurance companies, and about a zillion other agency would demand something like that in a public building. Having a floor that can shatter and cause people to drop several feet to a lower floor and/or get severely cut is a bad idea, so you'd want your transparent floor to be something that cannot break.

So..... how did they get the carriage out the front door of the museum? I doubt it was big enough to accommodate it.

We're several years now into the apocalypse. While I can get people still getting upset when a loved one dies, you'd think it'd almost be "expected" or at least not surprising when it happens to the point of the type of reaction the parents of Kid Plot Fodder gave.

Yeah, it's the apocalypse and things like this doesn't matter anymore, but...

"Herschel" is a kind-of odd name in this day and age to give your kid, particularly when he's half Korean.

 

If liking this new Maggie is against trend, then to hell with trend.