The Walking Dead: Why Rick Grimes' Fate Was Both Disappointing And Surprising

This post contains spoilers for The dead who walk Season 9, episode 5, "What comes next."

Honestly, we probably should have seen that coming. Yes, the first episodes of this season have been promising. It seems for a moment that the series may have found a way out of the wood in which she has stumbled aimlessly for two seasons. The plots were moving, Negan's presence was relatively minimal, and key characters and relationships were finally rediscovered. Unfortunately, it seems now that the series has not yet learned from his worst mistakes because, on Sunday night, the final episode of Rick Grimes ended with a turn both disgusting and unsurprising. It turns out that Rick will not die – at least probably not. Instead, he will live as a manipulator cliffhanger. Honestly, it's hard to think of a more appropriate spell for directing a series that has lost all meaning for an artificial narration a long time ago – but given the promises of those early episodes, it's hard not to feel a little bit disappointed.

Our intrepid and unkempt leader practically spent Sunday's entire mission fleeing a giant horde of zombies. Well, actually, he was riding on horseback and sitting on horseback, thanks to the nasty impiety he suffered last week. Rick managed to free himself from the bar that stabbed him, but thanks to the blood loss, he spent his entire journey home, hallucinating his dead and alive, but most of the time dead. Jon Bernthal came back under the name of Shane to resume the conversation about the cheeseburgers at the premiere of the series; Scott Wilson, who died last month, came back under the name of Hershel and Sonequa Martin Green introduced himself to resume his role as Sasha, who gave Rick an encouraging speech on a sea of ​​corpses. All the loved ones Rick has seen guide him in his quest to find his family – and reconcile what has become of this apocalyptic world and the role it has played. But despite all his fearlessness, Rick never sees his late wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) or his dead son, Carl (Chandler Riggs) – and although the episode removes the absence of characters without much conviction, their presence would have brought a deeper and more emotional resonance to an episode that badly needed it. And then, there is this end.

Rick has spent almost the entire episode on the brink of death. So it is not a surprise if, towards the end, he found himself standing on the bridge almost finished, exhausted, while the horde finally caught up with him. Michonne, Daryl and the gang arrived just in time to witness his latest act of heroism: to prevent the horde from invading the communities, Rick fired his gun at dynamite left on the construction site, blowing up the bridge, slowly crossing it, and himself. However! Rather than letting Rick die, The dead who walk decided to keep him alive – somehow. Anne (née Jadis) found Rick injured in a ravine, while she was waiting for a helicopter to evacuate her. We still do not know who or what the helicopter is associated with – but whoever they are, Anne ensured her evacuation by promising that she had an "A." C & # 39; was a lie – but fortunately for Anne, Rick is apparently a "B". as Anne told the people flying the helicopter. Anyway, it was enough to attract Rick and Anne on the helicopter. But as they fly to the setting sun, it's hard not to feel at least a little, if not very, bored.

Rick's salvation is both cowardly and manipulative. It's an immediate reminder of one of the most frustrating decisions in the series: to make fans believe that Glenn was dead, but a few weeks later he would miraculously reveal that he had survived – before hurting him for a few moments later. more weeks later. At the time, critics had called the series to manipulative narration – although to tell the truth, this element was not new. A season earlier, for example, fans spent half a season looking for Beth Greene, but only for her to be killed absurdly in the mid-season final. It seems that the entire search was conducted in order to make Beth's death even more atrocious – and if this This sounds familiar, because the series did the same thing with Carol's daughter, Sophia, in Season 2. Rick's miraculous rescue is just the latest entry in a long list of choices intrigues conceived not for a narrative sense, but for suspense. All this, taken from an AMC episode marketed explicitly under the pseudonym "The last episode of Rick." It is possible that Lincoln never comes back for a cameo, but leaving the possibility open cancels any possibility of finality or closure.

Andrew Lincoln's release of the series was probably a difficult prospect for The dead who walk and his writers to cope – especially as Lauren Cohan This departure is also worrying for the future of this season. The series is at a crossroads, and the conclusion of Rick's story might have set the tone for a season clearly designed, at least in part, to repair the sins of those who immediately preceded it. Instead, all that this down payment proves is that The dead who walk Basically, it remains concerned with attracting as many viewers as possible, regardless of the means of narration required. The narrative meaning is secondary to something "shocking" that can provide fans with a new mystery to guess at. ("Will we ever see Rick?" "who Do these people have helicopters? It makes no sense to know that Rick is alive, off-screen, and if even the guy who's been at the center of this show for nine seasons can not come to an emotionally satisfying conclusion, what's the point? purpose of the story that surrounds it?

The hollow at The dead who walkThe heart of the film is obvious for years, but now that Rick is gone, it may be time to admit that everything that this series had about fascinating or significant has already told us about what it means to be human in a collapse of society, these days are long gone. C & # 39; The dead who walkHeart now, and this for a long time. And he is as dead as the decaying corpses that populate him.

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