Spoilers for the latest aired episode of The Walking Dead follow
My current knowledge of The Walking Dead is from recaps and Twitter comments, so please forgive me for not doing a full analysis. Apparently Andrew Lincoln’s final scene aired last night and he didn’t die! He was whisked off in a medical helicopter that came to give him treatment at the last minute. It sounds implausible and like a cheap deus ex machina device designed to leave Rick’s fate open to potential spin offs. That may be the case. Former showrunner Scott M. Gimple was recently promoted to head the entire TWD franchise and he has plans for Rick. Gimple told The Hollywood Reporter that at least three full length Walking Dead movies are planned for AMC and that Lincoln will return. Ca-ching.
“The story of Rick will go on in films,” Gimple says. “Right now, we’re working on three but there’s flexibility in that. … Over the next several years, we’re going to be doing specials, new series are quite a possibility, high-quality digital content and then some content that defies description at the moment. We’re going to dig into the past and see old characters. We’re going to introduce new characters and new situations.”
“Rick Grimes is an amazing character and Andy has done an amazing performance. There were story ideas brewing that, as the years went on, seemed very compatible with continuing to tell the Rick story in another format that would allow him time with his family,” Gimple says, confirming that (spoiler alert) Rick does indeed survive his injuries.
“We look at this as a very long-term proposition,” AMC programming president David Madden tells THR of the larger goal for the franchise. The Rick-centric movies, the executive says, will not be like a bonus or extended episode of the show but rather a “large, big scope movie that will feel like a major motion picture,” with a runtime anticipated to come in at around two hours with a feature film-level budget.
Along with including Rick, they’re going to tell other connected stories of the apocalypse using some fan favorites. (This reminds me that the actor who played Hershel, Scott Wilson, sadly passed away last month at 76.) I don’t blame them for this, the show is still incredibly popular even if ratings have suffered compared to earlier seasons. Plus they must get top advertiser money. I read a lot of comments on Twitter that the commercials seem longer than the actual show. I can’t help but think that they’re going to continue to run this series into the ground, but that’s why they promoted Gimple, right? He’s very good at doing that.
photos courtesy of AMC
There are people who still watch this show??? I watched a few episodes from the first season and I got bored! I used to work for a company that digitized comics and I read a lot of the issues (in French actually) as I was going through the PDFs looking for weird file errors. The guy who does the art is pretty talented but it was the same story over and over–zombie attack, gore and violence, bickering among survivors, lather, rinse, repeat. I thought it was interesting at first but I stopped reading after awhile because the storylines became so predictable and cyclical. The fact that it is just an open ended zombie apocalypse with no answer as to how the heck the virus got started in the first place and if there’s a way to reverse it–not my thing. I understand it’s a moneymaker but… there are enough people watching to warrant 3 movies?
That’s why I stopped watching: the same plot over and over, plus the doom and gloom and brutality got to be a bit much. I can turn on the news and see that.
I watched a few seasons and I agree. They use the same storylines over and over, just changing the names of the villains. It bothered me too that they never explained how the virus got started.
Yup, it became just the same thing over and over again, and there was definitely a theme of “how brutal/gory can we make this.” we stopped watching it a few seasons ago and it kind of makes me laugh every time I read an update and realize that the series still has not changed.
Saaaaaaaame! Literally the same plot-line over and over for NINE SEASONS and still no answers about the reason for the zombies, or any sense of an end-game? I understand that it’s a case of beating the dead horse until it stops spitting out money – but I truly don’t understand how anyone still watches it regularly!
Angela Kang is doing an amazing job of re-inventing this show and has breathed new life into it.
Angela Kang? Isn’t she one half of a team that screwed over Frank Darabont way back in the beginning of the show? Hm.
Yep. We would have a different show if she had been at the helm the last few years and as someone ans yes she worked with Darabont.
How can this show continue logically? Surely the first outbreak caused the largest wave of zombies which would all be skeletons by now. So the hordes should have dissipated. Villainous rulers with sick habits sure, that occurs today, but the actual zombie parts not so much.
Plus they need to get a new story line, new place, bad guy, happy people die, band together to end bad guy, move to new place.
That is always my husband’s war cry. There wouldn’t be so many of them left! I have to remind him every week it’s a tv show and if the walkers are gone, so is the show, which may not be a bad thing. Keep reading the comics tho!
Everyone who dies becomes a zombie. They’re all infected. That’s why there’s always new ones and zombies in various stage of decay. If someone dies and no one else brains them, they come back.
But one 90% of the population is bones, then there are no more hordes. Just 1 off here and there.
How the hell do they have three movies left of material?? The show has been limping along since season 4!
Okay, so I will say this; if Michionne gets her own movie that is basically two hours of her being a gigantic badass, cutting her way through swaths of zombies while Judith Grimes snipes the ones she misses from her shoulders, I’ll pay good money to see it. But that’s IT.
I think they gave the audience a big fu throughout the entire episode. My husband called the end correctly after the first scene. Once the show started to deviate so far from the comics, it has become more of a chore than an escape to watch. I might finally be done, at least till next Sunday!
I also guessed the ending, figuring he might be saved by the helicopter, because even though AMC was beating us over the head that these were rick’s last episodes, they never said he would actually die. so I was actually more shocked by the end bridge scene, thinking that they had really done it! but then … nope. off to parts unknown with jadis.
I complain about this show and actually did drop out during most of seasons 6-8 but I’m back on board now. the new big time jump will be interesting, but weird that they didn’t time it around the mid-season finale, to give a cleaner break between the old rick-centric show and this new one with boss baby judith.
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In the last past when someone was killed, they didn’t annouce that it was that characters last episode, like they did last night. They wanted us to believe he was dead, but most astute viewers knew otherwise. When Baby Judith is now some new force and put on Carl’s hat, I had to laugh. Quite sure that wasn’t the reaction the writers were looking for. Time will tell if I continue watching, probably since my husband will. But as I keep saying, I’m rather faithful to the comics…………if they had continued to follow them, people who are there wouldn’t be and vice versa. Daryl cries so sexy!
yeah, the last scene introducing new judith was corny as hell. definitely didn’t come across as badass as I assume scott gimple & co intended.
daryl’s crying was sweet, norman didn’t go over the top this time. also, I am hoping daryl gets a haircut in this time jump. why does everyone else get a new lewk and not him? I liked his hair a little shorter, like season 4 length.
I stopped watching several seasons ago, so I’m missing a lot of info. But a helicopter? Seriously? It’s been years since this whole thing started. Years. Do you know how much fuel a helicopter uses?? I’ve often wondered where all this fuel is coming from. It’s not like the infrastructure required to drill and process oil to make fuel still exists. And gasoline evaporates. So even if you take into account the stores in underground containers as gas stations that haven’t been looted yet, it’s going to dry up at some point. And all those cars sitting out for years? Yeah, they’re not going to start.
That’s the mystery. There is clearly some group/community/society somewhere out there that is making it. My guess is all will be revealed at the end of the series.
The helicopter has been in scenes sporadically for many seasons. It tells us there is more going on out in the wider world. Told my husband last week Rick would be rescued and taken away until Andrew needs more money.
lol. suspension of disbelief only goes so far! I’m always side-eyeing their somehow endless supply of ammunition. so many guns, so many bullets! even with eugene supposedly manufacturing bullets at times in the past seasons, there’s no way they would have enough for all the shooting they do on this damn show.
Technically the helicopter has been showing up and was tied to Jadis for two seasons (I think? maybe just this one, but I think it showed up last season too), so it’s not AS big a deus ex machina. When they showed the swarm of helicopters at the beginning of his fever dream, I figured that’s what would happen. But I seem to recall that some TWD people DID actually say Rick Grimes was dying, so I was kind of hoping he was. I’d LOVE to see what’s happening in other parts of the world, and I imagine they’ll find some way to take him to England or something since didn’t he quit because he wanted to move back home with his family? But I’m sad that he’s apparently left Michonne and Judith for good.
Although I was glad the show just outright had Shane say, “Hey, how’s my daughter? She has my eyes.” I liked time-jump Judith. I’m interested to see where they take the story now. Angela Kang is already doing a better job than Gimple. I stuck with this season just to see if it was worth it with a new show runner. It’s gotten better.
I’m afraid time-jump Judith will be a disaster. She annoyed me for the minute she was on last night. Finally, Michonne can stop being the dreamy eyed homemaker and go back to being the warrior assassin queen she was. That storyline fell flat on it’s face for me although AMC was shipping it so hard. I do like the newer/tougher Maggie, although guess her character is leaving too.
I’ve watch TWD since its premiere in 2010. I was set to stop watching as soon as Rick Grimes left the show. Now, I’m intrigued by the time jump and opportunities to truly shake things up. Angela Kang has made the show more interesting than Scott Gimple ever did. Like others, I was sick of the doom and gloom. I couldn’t understand wanting to live if the threat of a horrible death was at every turn. Also, the zombie hoards are truly unbelievable at this point. They mostly would be rotted out and barely a threat.
I loved the scene with Shane and Rick. Jon Berenthal and Andrew Lincoln had great chemistry. I wish Glenn, Andrea, Lori, Carl, and Abe could have made appearances too. Sasha’s appearance didn’t make much sense as it related to Rick. I’m not remembering these characters interacting on a significant level.
Okay, enough of my nerdy TWD fandom.
I gave up on TWD several years ago.
It jumped the shark a loooong time ago.
OTOH, more power to Andrew Lincoln. Get that $$$$ Sheriff Rick!
Andrew Lincoln carried this show on his back in year 1. He was fab.
Oh, btw, Norman Reedus looks awful. Awful and greasy and smelly. Even when he’s on the red carpet and not shooting TWD. Dude, it’s called acting, you’re allowed to take a shave/shower/shampoo on your days off work. Geez. Ick.