Spoilers The Walking Dead - Season 9 discussion and spoilers

Eh, waste of a finale. Slow paced is ok, but this felt like an episode 5 filler in a season, not a wrap up. Kingdom fell apart, heard random voice on radio at the last second, that's the entire episode in 7 words. And that happened in the first 2 minutes and the final 2 seconds, so entire rest of it was just scenery. Except for the parts that were bad.

Finally got frozen walkers. Good, makes sense. Except that some froze while walking around, and others were actually IN the water or under snow and totally fine. (yes, snow can insulate, I know, but if they're freezing solid, mostly past that point). In a 'real' ZA, winter would be Zombie Cleanup season, where you go around and smash all the frozen (or slowed to a near halt) zombies you can find before the spring thaw.

Also, WHERE is this show again? Snowstorm blocked all the paths, and could be snowed in for weeks? If it was in the Rockies, or even Vermont/New Hampshire, maybe. Having trouble seeing that in northern Virginia. I mean, when they get 2" of snow they ACT like it's a snowpocalypse, but in reality, it's 2" of snow and there's green grass again the next day. Possible that there were some limited nuclear exchanges back during the fall of civilization and climate has changed somewhat, but it's been fine/as expected for the last 7-10 (or thereabouts, how old is Judith now?) years, it would be a pretty delayed nuclear winter. That's also sorta a year-round thing, and you don't get normal weather all year and then just more snow in winter. Short of that, not understanding the snow issue in this one. Average weather in DC during the winter is in the upper 40s/low 50s most of the time, I wouldn't volunteer to be the first one to walk across the 'frozen' river of moving water...

And goodie, now the nutso leader is maiming herself to gear up for the next mindless batch of 'war' episodes. Which will be a couple random raids, few episodes of talking about it, and then finally an underwhelming 'battle' (against people with no particular weapons) for the mid-season finale. Would love to move past the super duper bad guy of the season, and if that's the best they've got, wrap it up. retreading old ground it feels like. Still want to see where the show winds up, but would love them to shake it up some more...

 

Enjoyable episode. I was wondering how they'd top last week's, and while they didn't exactly top it, this episode works as sort of an epilogue to the season. Carol and Ezekiel have split, with Ezekiel apparently not wanting Darryl's continued presence around him. Carol's showing sympathy to Lydia and apparently Darryl's now Lydia's sort of guardian.

We saw some interesting creativity with the frozen Walkers and utilizing a winter environment to combat them. I especially liked using an icicle as a weapon.

The Alexandria storyline with Gabriel and gang watching over Negan starts off amusing with Negan mocking the love triangle. "Father, not the father" made me laugh my ass off, mostly because I was thinking up a similar one-liner ever since finding out it was Siddiq who impregnated Rosita. The story then turns somewhat sweet and heartwarming when Judith runs after Dog, and Negan then runs after her and actually risks his own life to save Judith. While this may not be enough to commute Negan's sentence, it is an important first step to showing there's some manner of decency in him. It'll be interesting to see where this goes in the new season.

I will say, the Alexandria story was kind of flawed in the sense that everyone acts like this is the first time they've had to let Negan out of his cell. But it's been over six years since he was imprisoned, which means in the intervening winters there must have been other blizzards which have necessitated congregating the Alexandria citizens into the houses with largest fireplaces. That would almost certainly seem to be the case, given how smoothly the operation went, including the readily available backup to head over to Aaron's house if anything went wrong. Surely at some other point in these other blizzards it became necessary to move Negan out of his cell?

It is interesting to note that we're really leapfrogging through time on this show now. It's established early on in the episode that it's been a few months since last week's events, and the epilogue scene with the Whisperers seems to be in spring, based on the fact all the snow is melted. Which is amazing since many of the previous seasons tend to only take place over a period of a few weeks or less. Hell, I think this episode alone covers a greater span of time than the entire Negan storyline of seasons 7 and 8 combined.

 

This last episode was kinda messy and disappointing. It was advertised as heartbreaking...but not really.

I got a little confused, and wondered why Michonne didn't go after Judith -- forgot she was at the Kingdom.

Yeah, the time factor is confusing. We saw a bit of snow last episode.... so it seems at least a few days after the Faire, as most people already left the kingdom.

But the population of the Kingdom seemed pretty low. did people already leave or something?

The water problems were hinted early on, so no surprise it shut everything down. But wondering how long Michonne was at Kingdom?

I was also confused at exactly what Ezekiel was asking Darryl to do. He seemed to respect Darryl, even dropping the accent for a real-to-real talk.

Was anyone able to make out what was being said at the end with the radio? WIll Maggie come back? It was nice that they at least mentioned her.

 

Angela Kang has openly said that they are negotiating with Lauren Cohan, and she has even gone on record saying Maggie's story is not over. It also seems likely that Lauren's new show Whiskey Cavalier will get canceled, as it's ratings are on a downward slide, and it's on a very competitive channel. Does that mean Lauren will come back to The Walking Dead full time? Not necessarily, but I suppose if they finally open up the check book, she'll come back.

 

Yes, it said : “Is anybody out there?”

 

What a strange finale. They abandoned Kingdom, there was a voice at the end on the radio... All of the interesting stuff happened last week obviously.

It's been a pretty strong season - better than either of the Savior seasons. It's been an interesting shake-up that the show has needed for a long time, and especially when Rick disappeared.

I just can't help but feel that I'm not onboard with the whole Whisperer threat. They've done terrible things, and I was shocked seeing all of the death last week. I just don't find Alpha or Beta interesting in any way. Here's hoping Lydia develops into something interesting to help kill them all and avenge Henry and everyone else.

 

I am pretty sure the Whisperers will be an ongoing threat from now on. They basically replaced the zombies. There will be no glorious revenge.

 

That was explained on Talking Dead. Ezekiel wants Darryl out of his life, since he blames Darryl for Henry's death.

 

Northern Virginia is no stranger to bad snowstorms. ...and that's in a functioning society. To people almost reduced to pre-industrial lives, the situation becomes incredibly dangerous to everyone.

The "green grass" of the Whisperer scene was an obvious time jump, much like the beginning of the episode, where (for one example) Rosita is farther along in her pregnancy than E15.

Ezekiel was such a neutered man in his behavior. He must have missed how headstrong Henry was since he was a child. Henry was the one who insisted on rescuing / bringing Lydia into the survivor's world, not Daryl. There was nothing to stop Henry's actions which did inspire Alpha to feel her daughter was "stolen" from her by what she considered a love-struck interloper. If Henry accepted Lydia returning to the Whispers, never going after her, there would be no beheadings--including his own. But Ezekiel cannot (will not) see that, and is simply whining about the fact Carol has a deep relationship with someone not named Ezekiel.

 

The Walking Dead finale was watched by 5.02 million, which is the most since episode 9 of this season. Unfortunately its also the lowest rated finale of the entire series.

 

You know I was thinking but that herd of zombies you would think most of them would be frozen stiff like we saw with some of the zombies. Also if zombies can freeze like that then we have yet another reason why we should actually not see many zombies still around after 7 years. The human body can only take so much wear and tear and the decomposing one would be worst.

Jason

 

The MVP of Season 9 was Ozzy. He went down fighting like a tiger!

 

Well, that was a very different look at the Zombie Apocalypse. I've always wanted to see the Zombie Apocalypse in the dead of Winter, so this was kind of fun. I loved seeing the frozen Zombies get knocked into frozen chunks. I couldn't quite figure out why some were frozen and some weren't, but the Zombies rising up out of the snowbanks was a cool visual. This season of Walking Dead has certainly expanded the show's repertoire of atmosphere and settings, from spooky graveyards to blizzards. It's kind of odd that we've never seen weather like this before, even though the dialogue suggested that it's happened before, just not so early in the season. Perhaps ten years of the Apocalypse has reversed global warming and Winters are growing more harsh.

It was also a different sort of finale, luckily, since the penultimate episode was so gruesome. But most of this was Man versus Nature, rather than Man versus Man or Man versus Zombie. But I'm happy with a finale that includes Daryl in a snowball fight with a bunch of kids. And along the way we got to see Carol save Lydia from herself a couple of times, and Negan save Judith (and dog); whatever else goes on in his psychotic mind, he seems to have transferred his affection for Carl to her and was willing to risk his life for her. Unfortunately, we also got to see a rift develop between Carol and Ezekiel-- hopefully that is not permanent. Nor should the fall of the Kingdom be permanent, especially now with a formal alliance between the communities.

And it seems we have a new player on the horizon if that crackly voice on the radio is any indication. At first I thought it might be Jaydis, but why would she be asking if anyone is out there? It seems more likely to be some new complication.

 

I liked that, sure it was missing an epic feel, but it's nice to see the elements as another enemy they have to face, beyond the Walkers and the Whisperers. Felt more like an old school survivalist story, still not sure why heading for Hilltop rather than waiting out the storm at the Kingdom wasn't a better option, sure they'd lost the boiler but surely they can still make fires etc. and still had food?

Negan saving Judith was kinda obvious, but by this point they've got 3 options. 1/kill him off 2/redeem him 3/have him return to evil ways. Killing him would be a waste, and they have Samantha Morton now as chief villain, given how engaging JDM is redeeming him was always the best option. Of course if Maggie did come back and Negan was wandering around free as a bird...

One thing I don't get is just how the Whisperers survived the storm? There's no evidence they have much in the way of shelter, or warm clothing.

Glad someone was able to make out what was said on the radio. So it's either Maggie, Jadis or someone we've never met?

 

Like birds, they migrate to south. Presumably with the large zombie herd.

 

I believe there was dialogue mentioned by Beta about needing to temporarily move out of their usual territory to survive the storm before he started whipping her to make her “strong” again.

 

Kind of a "meh" finale. Not much happened.
A bunch of people walked in a snowstorm and then had a snowball fight.

The only good scene was Carol and Lydia under the bridge. You can see Carol finally "get" that Lydia was raised in an abusive environment and while Lydia played a role in Henrys death she wasn't responsible for it. That was all Alpha.

I really like Samantha Morten as Alpha. Wonderfully evil without the over the top posturing of Negan.

Negan saying "They don't think they are evil" is just the first step on his redemption arc. His quips about the quadrangle were funny.

 

Finally got around to watching it, a lot going on the last couple of days.

Thought it was a good episode, naturally lacked the punch and shock-value of the previous one but thought it was a good character one and it was interesting seeing a winter setting and how it effects the walkers.

Which...

Okay, the apocalypse has been going on for something like 10-years now and... This is the first time they've dealt with a winter? While it's possible, though not very likely, they've never encountered a blizzard like this before (I'm pretty sure in their area over the course of the last 10 years there's been several blizzard or blizzard-like conditions in the real world) you'd think they'd already know how the cold impacts the walkers and to expect walkers to be buried in the snow.

Judith gets her moment of kid-like behavior in her running after Dog. It's okay because she's otherwise a bad-ass and it gave us some good levels of redemption for Negan. (Though not total exemption.)

How much time passed between this episode and when the heads on a pike were put up/Henry was killed. Seems like a good length of time had passed, as people had moved around some and the radio network was established. (last we saw/heard from Dog the deaf woman connect with Daryl was taking care of it, and Eugene was in the process of setting up the radio network.) Things between Carol and Ezekiel have become strained, which is a shame.

But, good episode and a really good season. Much better than last season. Look forward to next year!

 

You missed my point. Yeah, you linked to a time it snowed in VA. But not very much. And it doesn't stick around long (on account of the average temp being in the 40s in the dead of winter). Northern VA averages about a foot of snow (total) a year. Even if it fell in an hour, that's not something that makes the world impassible for weeks, which was what they said. Especially with horses available. Annoying, but not snowed in for weeks. Get a bad storm in the Rockies, and you get some Donner Party shit going on. In VA, it's gone in a few days. When they get bad storms, they panic because they don't have enough plows and people don't know what to do, but that's a function of it not happening very often. Just seems like a silly plot point for Virginia, unless the climate drastically changed in 7-10 years. Don't know if it's literally ever been cold enough there for a zombie to freeze solid to the point where it would shatter like ice, as neat as the visual is.

It's actually (IMO) more dangerous to US than it is to a pre-industrial society in that our dangers are due to lack of electricity, unsafe driving conditions, etc. Not issues if you don't have power or cars already. Similarly, it's crazy to think they wouldn't have cleaned the chimney before winter set in, wood would appear to be their primary heat source, so it's kinda life or death. They said the solar panels were out, not sure if that makes sense or if just covered with snow. either way, can't imagine they were running electric heat, crazy inefficient for solar, so neither here nor there for the issue. Clean the chimney. Even if not so jammed that you're getting CO poisoning, it's an excellent way to have a chimney fire...

yes, I caught that. Either a time jump, Whisperers migrating south for the winter, or both. I was referring to what Northern Virginia looks like a couple days after a snow storm

 

I can't wait to see Negan unleashed on the Whisperers!