Frontpage Popular News

WTWD? | Questions on Season 8: Finale

Moving Forward

With a finale as complex as this one, this time around fans might need a summer to brace themselves for the new TWD world to come. What has been resolved, and what has been initiated by the end of season eight? Many viewers already are speculating about the inner rift between Rick and Maggie and their viewpoints on Negan. Who do you agree with?

Keep ReadingShow less
Frontpage Popular News

WTWD? | Questions on Season 8: Episode 15

Checkmate

Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) Photo by Gene Page/AMC

In "Worth" we find out the value of all the players, so to speak, in the power games ensuing at the Sanctuary. The fixation over the last couple years with Dwight's chessboard comes to mind when we witness the strategizing and deception among the likes of Eugene, Dwight, Simon, and Negan. Who really are these duplicitous people we thought we already knew? Each think they are a step ahead of the other, but who is the one ultimately in control?

Keep ReadingShow less

What holds us together as individuals and what happens when those things are taken away? These are the overwhelming questions for episode fourteen, "Still Gotta Mean Something." Each featured character simultaneously loses and gains something, and this is for better or worse. Carol lets go of the fear associated with the loss of her daughter, and she then gains hope and -- finally -- a positive connection with another child, Henry (the real life brother of Carol's on-screen daughter). This is a long awaited reawakening for her, but some of our more mysterious characters grapple with loss as well. We find out what has bound them to life in this world, but when the smallest of threads by which they are still attached to humanity are cut, what can they possibly be left with?

Keep ReadingShow less
Frontpage Popular News

WTWD? | Questions on Season 8: Episode 12

Past and Future Grief

Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Lucille Photo by Gene Page/AMC

For once it is satisfying that someone has jumped the gun on Rick's plan, especially since that person is Rick himself. Overtaken by fury and provided with an irresistible opportunity to get Negan alone, he chases him off on wheel and foot into a building that is so dilapidated that it appears abandoned before the turn -- a new and fascinating set choice for the show. While Negan and Rick grapple in this haunted house of an almost forgotten past, leaders like Maggie and Georgie suss out plans for a more developed and interconnected future. Is Rick making a necessary correction to past injustices or indulging in his grief by focusing on the past, and is Maggie's choice to trust a stranger and begin focusing on the future wise or foolish at a time like this? What does this episode of contrasts tell us about emotional healing and leadership?

Keep ReadingShow less
Frontpage Popular News

WTWD? | Questions on Season Eight: Episode 9

The Death of Carl Grimes

Photo by Gene Page/AMC

How can it be possible for The Walking Dead to continue its story without Carl? Fans are upset and confused as to how a character that works symbiotically with Rick's can be axed without collapsing a fundamental premise of the show: a father motivated to protect his children. While Rick, of course, still has his adopted daughter as well as an entire adopted family now to push him forward, how will Carl's death change Rick? That question may be answered in understanding the legacy that Carl has left behind. There is also something to be said about the turning of generations and the clashing of the old and the new. Though audiences may have viewed this returning episode as a bit drawn out and despairing, there is meaning, even beauty, in Carl's death.

Keep ReadingShow less