The Walking Dead - mid season premiere--
"Honor"
Well this is it: Carl died. The one character nearly everyone thought would survive and become the "future" of the ZA world takes his leave. When a series runs this long and used major character deaths quite liberally, its difficult to play the heart-strings of audiences, but it worked well enough, since he was one of the few killed characters that was truly likeable and had not outlived his usefulness to the show.
Michonne's anguish was the most effective reaction of all; her arc was so tied to Carl as being one of the few characters (in addition to Andrea) who brought her back to humanity--first being sort of a big sister figure, then surrogate mother, and as Carl pointed out, his best friend. With that lost, it makes one wonder if she will return to her old ways of just existing with next to no emotional connection to anyone, including Rick and/or Judith (despite her promise to be strong for them and herself).
Morgan gutting one of the Saviors with his bare hands, and Benjamin's brother using his own training to kill Gavin. I guess this kind of violence (specifically, the child's loss of innocence) leads to his leaving TWD and moving to Fear the Walking Dead. His arc has to mean something, other than trying to find some "balance" between the Eastman way and his "Clear" days. The series seems to have "lost the plot" with Morgan not long after he was reintroduced. If he has to find personal redemption, I hope its after he bumps off some of the annoying FTWD characters....
If AMC was not so greedy, Carl's death would spell the beginning of the end of the series, as I cannot imagine going through the Whisperer arc and having it serve any character development purpose other than how freaky they are, and after the cannibals of Terminus, freaky has been played out on this series...so has heroes suffering season after season.
At the end of it all, we cannot ignore the well-publicized behind the scenes issues, from Gimple promising Chandler Riggs that he would be returning for future seasons, a denied pay raise (apparently, Lauren Cohan recently faced the same issue....), Riggs saying he wanted to go to college, to other questionable stories about the reasons Riggs left the series.
Whatever the true cause of his departure, the series is forced to take a far different direction in that the evil-leader-kills/heroes-fight-back model which was used with three significant arcs (The Governor, Terminus and Negan) cannot be handled in the same way, but what does that mean if Rick--thanks to the death of son--becomes the peacemaker he was at the start of season 4?
Best moment: Carl wanting to die in the church, for obvious reasons. This is the same Carl who (in season two) childishly mocked Carol for believing that Sophia was in Heaven, but one of his last requests illustrated just how much he matured over the years.
So, it was Carl dreaming of a future of older Rick, Michonne & Judith, one where Eugene and--of all people--Negan have been brought into the community. While that is the dream of someone who understands what forgiveness really means, its difficult to imagine certain characters, such as Daryl or Maggie ever forgiving Negan.
This was the best episode in some time, but I have the nagging feeling this level of quality drama will not last long.
