Welcome fans of The Walking Dead!
By now if you are a hardcore fan of The Walking Dead (TWD), I am sure you have watched the Season 9 opener. Let’s start off by saying WOW! These are Rick Grimes last episodes.
I loved the new intro to the show. I was a fan of the original for a very long time but it did need revamping. The beginning felt like it was an animated comic book and completely amazing. The colors were nice and vivid. If you missed the intro you must go back and watch it.
Many spoilers ahead so please if you have not watched the episode stop now!!
The show fast forwards in the zombie timeline approximately 18 months from the last episode in season 8. The episode starts of slow, as per TWD style and gives the lay-down of where they live and how the overall majority of main characters are doing. They show the colonies they have made and who is pretty much in charge of them.
Within 20 minutes of the show you then see the first action scene of the crew against walkers. It was a nice change of pace because in seasons past, what you see is more of the crew fighting against other human crews and I felt it was straying away from what first reeled people in: Zombies against humans.
In this action moment we see are introduced to a few new faces. Who these characters will be, only time will tell. During the zombie battle one of the new guys gets hurt and ultimately dies and Maggie had to make the hard decision of stabbing him in the head so that he would not become a zombie. Normally, Maggie would not have even hesitated to kill any zombie that comes her way. In that moment you realize that Maggie now has maternal instincts and finds it hard to stab this guy in the head. She looked a bit distraught, which is definitely unusual for her.
On the other side of town King Ezequiel is having a conversation with Carol. They make it known that now they are an item by kissing each other. I don’t know about you but this shocked more than a few people I know. I can’t say that I was personally shocked because honestly I kind of saw the way he cared for her. During previous seasons when she lived on her own just outside The Kingdom. The big new spoiler here is that in this episode, King Ezequiel asked Carol for her hand in marriage. This goes to show you that their relationship has been steady and strong for a while. She says to him that she doesn’t believe in marriage and that the ring would snag on things. She smiled nicely and he understood marriage maybe isn’t right at this moment. He also told her that when the timing was right he would love to marry her.
As I was watching the show it had aspects that reminded me of Little House on the Prairie. The way most of them are now on horses instead of cars. They use horse carriages to carry things from town to town and to carry people.They seem to have to resort to this since now gas is hard to find. They have their gardens they are trying to tend to also.
The big shocker of the night was Maggie. She stepped it up in the biggest of way! Setting an example for anyone who was not with them. Gregory was being two-faced, as he typically is, and Maggie got hurt as a result and almost killed as a result. She decided to kill Gregory in a public hanging therefore, setting an example for anyone who defies her and the rules of The Hilltop.
The episode was a bit slow overall but as we have seen in past seasons, that is how TWD is in its first episodes. Then action picks up and usually leaves you with some sort of cliff hanger after several different big events in the timeline. What did you think of the episode? I look forward to this new season of The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead airs on SUNDAYS 9/8C on AMC.
