Say what you want about The Walking Dead, there’s few who could genuinely deny the show its enormous success; the powerhouse series has continued to effectively reinvent itself for the past six years and really justify its impressive numbers.
Word has it that the TWD audience grew 27% globally between the fifth and sixth season, which isn’t a big surprise considering this has essentially been the show’s biggest run of episodes yet. The success is largely in part to the establishment of the Alexandria “Safe Zone” and further, deeper exploration of the group psychology of Rick & Co compared to that of other communities of survivors – a huge dynamic that has moved the show out of any possible rut and into something very interesting and expansive, with great potential for the show’s drama and philosophy (not to mention the action).
In light of the entire season six finally releasing on DVD/Blu-Ray (available now in all the obvious places), this is a good time to briefly reflect on what made season six work, and what held it back. Let’s break it up a bit shall we…
**SPOILER ALERT**: The following contains discussion on season six key developments as well as comic spoilers.
1. The Horde
The first handful of episodes that launched season six did so in a big, unexpected way. As Andrew Lincoln describes in an insightful feature on the S6 DVD extras, the quarry horde dealt with in segments was like one big entity, a leviathan that needed to be taken down strategically. It was like a big boss fight in an epic survival-horror video game, one of the most ambitious and engaging things the show has done to date, taking this monstrous gathering down methodically to show how efficient Rick & Co have become. It was a necessary refresh from the Season 5 finale – where Rick shot Pete point blank in front of Alexandria, and Morgan – and a clever way to reinforce Rick’s value, he knows what he is doing – even though things obviously go horribly wrong, because that’s how TV shows work.
Panning it out over several episodes paid off, treating the crisis from different angles as the community works as a unified front to reroute walkers using noise, cars, architecture, and a hell of a lot of risk. Worked in along the way was a re-establishment of some dynamics, treated with nuance rather than excessive exploitation. For example, you had Nicholas looking desperately to redeem himself to Glenn, and everyone’s favourite pizza boy approaching the cowardly survivor with tough love. We all know how that arc ended – global headlines were made – but watching Nicholas (brilliantly portrayed by Michael Traynor) wrestle with nerves and determination while trying to help Glenn was a strong part of the run from “First Time Again” to “Thank You” (it felt longer than just three episodes).
2. The Wolves Attack | Carol vs Morgan
“JSS” was easily the most violent episode of The Walking Dead in six years, shocking in the way it was handled, and how viscous The Wolves approached Alexandria. One minute Carol is staring out of the window after baking her legendary Sam-taming cookies, the next a red shirt is being hacked to death by a crazed maniac with a W carved onto his forehead – and Director Jennifer Lynch handled it all with a ferocious sense of scale.
This was one of two “Carol” episodes (the other being the superb “The Same Boat”) and a necessary part of her show-stealing arc, also bringing in Morgan both as a stand-out character and a way to juxtapose against Carol’s dedication to a “kill or be killed” ethos.
When Morgan says “all life is precious” he must really mean it if he avoids having to kill sadistic invaders such as these Wolves, leading to a dramatic tug-of-war between his and Carol’s philosophies on this blood-and-guts battlefield.
Melissa McBride has always been a thoroughly impressive presence on the show but here she took her performance to whole new level, tasked with showing shades of what was to come, demonstrating that all this killing was severely effecting Carol’s psyche and that her opposition to Morgan’s stubbornly peaceful perspective was already starting to break down.
Throughout the season the dynamic between Morgan and Carol remained the single most consistently interesting arc; throw in Benedict Samuel’s big bad Wolf as an experiment for Morgan, and a test for Carol, and you had something with a load of substance and bigger implications for the questions The Walking Dead has been asking since the beginning – “how far would you go to survive and is redemption possible in a post-apocalypse?”.
Of course, this whole arc led to Carol distancing herself from Alexandria and running away to confront what seemed like a desire for death, and an end to the killing. This led to a test for Morgan and – somewhat predictably – he had to break code to save Carol’s life, meaning that both survivors had their views shaken, forced to compromise and meet on middle ground.
3. Here’s Not Here
The Walking Dead crew have grown fond of their bottle episodes. They took a big risk frustrating viewers after the fake-out Glenn death from “Thank You”, but luckily for them “Here’s Not Here” went down as one of the finest hours the show has ever produced. The strength was of course thanks to the exceedingly talented Lennie James and the equally capable John Carroll Lynch, whose fantastical zen-like Eastman ends up being the show’s best one-episode character (better than Gargiulo, that’s for sure).
The minimal episode patiently built Morgan a believable backstory, James having to slowly but surely come around to Eastman’s peaceful approach to redeem himself, effectively replacing “clear” with “all life is precious” – along with Enid’s “JSS (Just Survive Somehow)”, TWD really hammered in the importance of having a ‘code’ to survive – and showing how Morgan took Eastman’s legacy and faithfully upheld it, explaining his attempts to help The Wolf despite what the atrocities. Without this necessary shade to Morgan’s character, his less-than-pragmatic approach would have been completely frustrating throughout the season, and though it was exhausting having the show reinforce “all life is precious” in pretty much every line of dialogue James was given, it gave Morgan the complexity needed to reflect off both Rick and Carol and really underline what they have become, and the layers of humanity they have sacrificed to survive.
4. Carol’s Escape
As mentioned above, Carol has emerged as The Walking Dead’s best character, there’s little doubt of that after “The Same Boat”, an episode in which Maggie and Carol are kidnapped by an off-shoot of Negan’s group. The way out of the dire situation is what Carol has been perfecting ever since her cautious self got to Alexandria, requiring her to act up a storm, blend in, and turn into a scared little chameleon – even using religion to camouflage her cunning – in order to get Maggie and herself out of harm’s way. Paula (a fantastic guest spot from Alicia Witt) in some ways reflected Carol’s ruthlessness and what she could become, adding another layer to the episode that thickened the air of tension right up until Negan’s minion had her face chewed off.
5. World Building
The introduction of The Hilltop Colony and The Saviours will drive this show into larger, more ambitious territory come season seven, expanding The Walking Dead universe drastically and bringing in other communities to not only stretch the show’s scope but flow into a whole new plot. From now on, the Alexandria community will need to be strategic in how they deal with, interact with, and trade with the other communities, whether the approach be hostile or friendly. This opens up possibilities for the show that were just never there when it was only Rick & Co on the road, building the Alexandria arc into something truly exciting.
Of course, the introduction of other communities also comes with Negan’s very dark, very imposing shadow. The finale was only the beginning of the havoc this new character and his crew will cause, his presence spelling the end for one of several characters, the majority of which have become part of the show’s fabric. Whoever met Lucille (I really hope they don’t follow the comics – that’d ruin the purpose of having a cliffhanger in the first place, and also make me cry), it’s likely a death that will build on the destruction of Rick’s ego and show team Alexandria that they aren’t in control. We already saw how Rick (an amazing job by Lincoln) went from confident to hopeless when he and his group were on their knees in front of Negan and his wooden, wire-covered love interest, this is the shape of things to come.
6. Last Day on Earth
The finale was far from perfect and I still question the decision to end on a big cliffhanger (though it makes sense from a business perspective) but Director Greg Nicotero really did bring the show back to it’s horror roots for “Last Day on Earth”, and it made from one delightfully dark and foreboding tone. Having Negan’s men eerily stalk Rick & Co while they were trying to get Maggie to The Hilltop was brilliant, leading to these really creepy, theatrical roadblocks that only got more intense and ended up funneling the crew to certain death. In a way, this mirrored the methodical re-routing of the big walker horde in the season premiere, flipping the advantage towards Negan’s team – a few episodes after an awesome, action-heavy assault from Rick’s group – and showing that these people can also play the redirection game, arguably better than Rick can.
7. Why You Always Lyin’?
It’s 2016 and we are in the golden age of television. Social media exists and so does the need for businesses to become ‘trending topics’. Despite their already massive success, The Walking Dead quite obviously aren’t shying away from this need to be an ever-present hashtag, and so we ended up with one of the most divisive decisions a TV show has made in years, taking things even further Game of Thrones took the Jon Snow cliffhanger and using tricky camera angles to make it look like the heart and soul of TWD – Glenn – had randomly been killed off unceremoniously, by the show’s biggest coward. Yes it made headlines, yes it effectively “broke the internet”, but it patronised the viewers in a way.
After the initial shock, it was obvious Glenn wasn’t killed, and many guessed he would use the distraction of Nicholas’ corpse to somehow climb under the dumpster and survive, as unrealistic as it was. Stretching this obvious ‘surprise’ out just proved to be more annoying than anything else, and because of the nature of social media, constant fan theories lessened the impact of the big reveal anyway.
It was very ill-advised to re-tread that same step for the season’s penultimate episode too, having Dwight shoot Daryl in the shoulder, blood splattering all over the camera to make it look like everyone’s new most-hated just took out a fan favourite on a whim. Again, fan’s weren’t easily fooled and instant theories calling the show’s bluff blew any tension to shreds.
And that’s really the reason why the cliffhanger reveal – I assume – in next month’s season 7 premiere won’t really have the intended impact. If they do follow the comics and – we warned you about spoilers – kill Glenn then what was the point of having the cliffhanger in the first place? If they do kill Abraham like many believe they will, then will it really have the same emotional gut-punch as off-ing Rick’s right-hand man (Glenn) in the comics? The only thing I could see working is either the rumoured double-death or killing Daryl – Rick’s right-hand in the series.
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The Walking Dead Season 6 is out now on DVD and Blu-Ray, chocked full of bonus features that provide deeper insight into the many big scenes this season has thrown at us.
There’s also some fun content that pays tribute to the show’s most memorable walkers, and entertaining commentary of all the big episodes – and no, the finale commentary doesn’t offer any hints on who meets Lucille.
Images: Gene Page/AMC
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