[This article contains spoilers]
Following on the heels of the Fear The Walking Dead finale, The Walking Dead has returned to bring viewers the psychological zombie thriller they know and love.
This season begins right where we left off last season, but in an expositional flash back. The true timeline begins a couple days in the future, as a plan to dismantle an incoming herd of walkers begins. Luckily, moments from the past were shown in black and white. While the exposition that was put forward throughout the show was to educate the audience and fill in the blanks, it felt like getting hit in the jaw with a storytelling hammer. The beauty of The Walking Dead is the intricate relationships and loaded choices the characters must make. By intermittently taking the audience away from the current events of an episode, you lose all the subtlety that the show is known for, and replace it with a heavy-handed framing mechanism. This episode was one step away from being scored with a catchy riff by July Talk, or something more classic like “Weapon of Choice” by Fat Boy Slim.
Seeing all of Alexandria act as a single unit towards a common goal was refreshing, but let’s be honest—this plan was doomed from the start. The death of Carter represents the fact that Alexandrians are just not ready. Unlike our well-worn protagonists we’ve been following since season one, these folks are not zombie killers, nor are they leaders in a time of crisis. This point was made clear when talk of overthrowing Rick and possibly Deanna came to an abrupt end, and Rick chose not to kill Carter when he discovered his idea to stop the plan and kill Rick.
You can’t execute an intricate plan if it includes people who don’t even know how to defend themselves outside of Alexandria. The people of this safe haven have not been trained to fight, let alone the intricacies of walker protocol. To expect them to do great things when the threat of thousands of walkers right beside them is more ridiculous than Morgan’s missing protein bar.
Minus Carter being bit in the face, screaming, and having to be put down by Rick, the plan seemed to be going well, but even the best laid plans fail. This strategy came crumbling down when a horn began to blow near Alexandria. It’s likely that the Wolves group is responsible, but who knows, maybe Carl has just had enough.