The Walking Dead “Last Day on Earth”

Julia Allen (10th), Reporter

*If you haven’t watched the Season finale of The Walking Dead, here’s your fair warning, there will be spoilers*

It was one of The Walking Dead’s character‘s “last day on earth” in the season finale, but here’s the catch; we don’t know who.

The Walking Dead is an wildly well-known television series, which premiered in October of 2010 on AMC. The whole series loosely follows, but does not fully replicate, the comic book, created by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead that debuted in 2003. The TV show is so renowned that around 19 million people watch it weekly. The show follows Rick Grimes, former police officer, and all of his gritty and daring team as they face numerous problems related to the undead, and arguably more dreadful, problems with the ones who are still alive, and are willing to fight to stay that way. The show has already reached six whole seasons, all of them more successful than the last, The series recently ended their sixth season, and provided fans with possibly the worst cliffhanger in history.

The finale aired on April third, 2016, and with the minutes leading up to the end, and for hours after, social media went on a complete frenzy with mixed emotions of horror, outrage , and utter confusion because of the swan song that the directors provided us with. In the episode, Rick and his gang desperately try to find a way into a neighboring community, hilltop, because they have a doctor, and one of Rick’s friends, Maggie, is having trouble with her pregnancy. They keep getting stopped by The Saviors, a rather inhumane group that Rick’s group had recently met in prior episodes and had to kill many members of their team for their own safety, making fans question if Rick and his team are still the “good guys.”

Adrian Del Real, sophomore at Pitman and fan of the show, states, “I still think Rick and his group are good guys. They’re doing what they have to do to survive. In the world they’re living, they have to make adjustments they wouldn’t make otherwise.”

Also in the episode, friends of Rick, Morgan Jones, pursues Carol Peletier, who has strayed from Rick’s group because she does not like the use of violence that has overcome the group over time in the apocalypse. Carol comes upon a man from The Saviors who wishes to torture her and watch her die in pure agony. To her rescue, Morgan shows up, and shoots the man, which is a big breakthrough in the character analysis of Morgan.

Rick’s group ends up deciding to walk through the forest to get to hilltop, but fails when The Saviors find them, and holds them captive. Leader of The Saviors is revealed as Negan, notorious miscreant in the comics. He is infuriated that Rick had the audacity to kill many members of his team, and lines them up on their knees. He grabs his infamous weapon, a baseball bat covered in barbed wire which he calls Lucille. He announces that one of them will be battered to nothing with it. When he can’t decide, he has a “great idea” and begins to play the what used to be innocent game of eenie, meenie, miny, moe. The finale ends with Negan pointing the bat at an unknown character and starts to swing endlessly, driving fans insane.

Many stand-out things happened in this episode, Morgan, who had never killed anyone living before, killed the man torturing Carol, further proving to her that you can do anything for someone you love, and Rick’s group must be held together tighter than ever before as they face fear itself, The Saviors.

Del Real also shares, “That’s a really important thing for Morgan to do, he’d never killed anyone before, and the fact that he killed someone for Carol is the perfect way to show her that he cares, and so does the rest of the group”

The Walking Dead is often criticized for their long periods of time in between seasons and mid-seasons, and for this one, we are waiting nearly seven months for season seven to start. Fans and critics are begging for some closure as to who it was that unfortunately perished, but like millions of other people, they’ll all have to wait.