Much of The Walking Dead‘s ninth season has been a successful reset, taking the show back to what made it great in the first place. The stakes were well-drawn and built on real tension, and for the first time in quite a while, it felt like the show had something to say, something on its mind beyond “Humans are the real monsters.” For the most part, the storytelling has been streamlined, and the performers more present and engaged. Which is what makes “What Comes After” doubly disappointing. It’s the much-ballyhooed exit for Rick Grimes, although AMC must have gotten cold feet about the franchise’s future, as it was announced before this episode aired that Andrew Lincoln would headline a trilogy of Walking Dead films, in spite of the fact that this franchise has not produced a single viable movie star (it’s a lot like Game of Thrones in that regard, and only in that regard), nor is TWD popular enough to make the leap to movie theaters. Viewership has been steadily declining since the beginning of season seven, and it doesn’t look like the show can pull itself out of that nosedive. “What Comes After” again hits the reset button, but not on the show; rather, it aims to reset the entire franchise. This is a method that has proven effective in the past (in Fear the Walking Dead), and while it’s too early to say if it’s working here, it feels cheap and unearned. Like a lot of this episode.
“What Comes After” starts strongly enough, with Rick hallucinating a conversation with his comatose self, lying in the hospital last seen in the pilot. It might not always be successful, but I love how weird this show is willing to get. This is the first of many conversations wherein someone asks Rick “What’s your wound?” and later tells him to “Wake up” (this episode really apes the structure of the classic Futurama episode “The Sting”). It’s all so much less profound than the show thinks it is, which has been a running problem on The Walking Dead four years now. The last time TWD was able to deliver a genuine emotional gut-punch was way back in its fourth season, in “The Grove.” But that episode was rooted in character development and emotionality, whereas “What Comes After” falls back on stunt casting and narrative contrivances.
To wit: Rick’s horse, the one that threw him last week, resulting in his impalement, is unbothered by the encroaching herd of walkers. It just stands there placidly while Rick hoists himself off of the rebar (which is one of the episode’s bright spots; Andrew Lincoln portrays pain well, and this looks excruciating). The bulk of “What Comes After” has Rick leading the herd away from the camp, thinking it will be his last act on earth. His journey is broken up by dreamlike reveries, some more successful than others. Let’s just go through them.
Shane: I can honestly say I was surprised to see Jon Bernthal stop by, and he slid back into the role of Shane Walsh like it’s a well-worn coat. (To be fair, a lot of Bernthal’s post-TWD roles have been variations on Shane.) I was wrong earlier when I said that no stars had come out of this show, because bernthal has made a pretty solid career for himself, popping up in Sicario, The Accountant, The Wolf of Wall Street, Baby Driver, and of course the title role on The Punisher. Rick and Shane have an adversarial chemistry that the show has been unable to replicate with any other pairing, although God knows it’s tried again and again with Daryl. The Rick/Shane scene is surprisingly emotionally loaded, and it’s uncomfortable to watch Shane taunt Rick over Judith’s true parentage. This isn’t a memory, it’s a dream, so we’re looking at Rick’s real buried feelings and insecurities, brought to the fore. This is the best scene in the episode, and the rest of the hour can’t recapture the magic.
Hershel: The least of Rick’s hallucinations, although Scott Wilson (RIP) does a good job with playing a fundamentally decent man. The problem with this scene is that it all just looks so fake. The CGI behind Rick and Hershel is frankly atrocious; it would look better if they were standing in front of a matte painting. It undercuts anything the scene is trying to do, and looks like cut-rate video game graphics.
Sasha: I love Sonequa Martin-Green as much as the next person, but did anyone get the feeling that Sasha is only here because Steven Yuen wasn’t returning any calls? This scene would have hit a lot harder if it were Glenn that Rick encountered. Sasha was a key member of the cast for a long time, and had one of the most memorable deaths on TWD, but I never got the sense that she and Rick were all that close. The tableau is nice – Rick and Sasha standing on a sea of corpses – but again it just looks so fake. More than anything, this encounter just makes you wonder why The Walking Dead is so chintzy with its CG budget.
Elsewhere, it seems like the show is in such a hurry to give Rick his (im)proper sendoff that it’s giving short shrift to its previously established conflicts. The scene between Maggie and Michonne, where they argue over Negan’s life, should have been a real barn-burner, but in it Michonne just comes off as intransigent and slightly condescending. The show pokes a hole in its own (formerly compelling) argument when Maggie points out that if Negan had killed Rick instead of Glenn, nothing would stop Michonne from seeking justice. In the end, Maggie decides not to kill Negan, after hearing him beg for death. Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a lot with a little – the writing has done him no favors – so it’s hard to tell if this is some kind of feint. Which is to the show’s credit.
Ultimately, Rick’s final episode feels like a cop out in a lot of ways. He doesn’t die in the bridge explosion, which would have been a noble sacrifice; no, he washes up on a riverbank and is ferried away by the increasingly tiresome Jadis and her helicopter. So it’s hard to even think of this as a goodbye, especially since we’re staring down the barrel of a trilogy of Walking Dead movies that nobody wants. AMC has said that they have plans for another decade of TWD content, so it’s hard to feel any real sense of loss. At one point, Michonne says to Rick, “We don’t die.” That sounds about right.
A Few Thoughts
- “What Comes After” ends with a seven-year time jump, which isn’t a surprise considering how much this franchise loves those. It looks interesting, but the fact that the execrable Dan Fogler has joined the cast should worry everyone watching the show.
- Did you know this is also Lauren Cohan’s last episode as Maggie, at least for the foreseeable future? TWD really did her dirty here.
- We may have lost one of this show’s two consistently compelling characters, but at least we got *checks notes* a small child in the exchange? Shit!
2/5
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