This week, co-writers Scott Gimple and Matthew Negrete seemingly wanted to prove that Morgan was capable of killing someone under the right circumstances, so Carol had to make an uncharacteristic choice to go out and put herself in harm’s way just to facilitate Morgan coming after her, which, in turn, facilitated a showdown between Morgan and the Savior who was trying to kill her. Sure, she’s probably afraid of becoming like the people they’ve been forced to face this season, but when Alexandria has walls and supplies and hope for the future in a new generation that includes Judith, Carl, and Maggie and Glenn’s unborn baby (if it survives), it seems like there’s even more that’s worth fighting and killing for than there was before.Īs with last week’s episode, in which pretty much every character made completely ridiculous decisions purely because the writers needed them to end up in peril, the finale showed the strings being pulled above our puppets a little too clearly (how apt, then, that the episode featured two men being hanged). This character 180 might’ve made sense if the show hadn’t rushed it, or had offered a little more insight into her thought process instead of simply focusing on lingering shots of her smoking pensively on the porch - and I could’ve understood Carol’s motivations if this flip had taken place after “The Grove” - but given what the group has had to deal with at the hands of the Wolves and the Saviors this season, it seems especially questionable that she’d be squeamish about killing humans when humanity has shown them its dark side again and again this year. The most frustrating plot thread was once again courtesy of Carol, since the finale sadly confirmed the fact that she really did decide to do the post-apocalyptic equivalent of committing suicide, leaving Alexandria just because she didn’t want to be forced to kill anymore (never mind that her self-preservation instinct necessitated killing a whole car full of Saviors she otherwise wouldn’t have encountered if she’d just stayed home), and not, as I had hoped, because she wanted to launch another one-woman attack on Negan and the Saviors, similar to her Hail Mary pass at Terminus. This season has certainly pushed many critics to that point, judging by conversations I’ve had, but “The Walking Dead” obviously has no shortage of viewers, and many may be satisfied to be strung along through the plot’s many contortions, which have strained credulity fairly consistently this season, especially in the last few episodes. Charlie Brown might continue falling for Lucy’s football trick, but at a certain point, we as viewers - free of the confines of a comic strip - should probably know when to walk away. In any other year, that might’ve seemed like a canny and unique way to ensure that fans come back for Season 7 in October, but in a season that has gone out of its way to toy with its audience under the guise of “keeping us guessing,” it feels less like a valid storytelling device and more like a petty game of keep-away.
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