*THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD … AND A CRYING PRIEST, RANDOM WALKERS AND AN UNDEAD PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE, ALL BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTER “W”…
So a funny thing happened to me on the way from the review of season 5 penultimate episode “Try” to its movie-length season finale “Conquer”.
Yep, somewhere between everything, and I mean everything pointing to the brutal, bloody and scorched earth deadliness of Woodbury and Terminus being repeated in the idyllic cookies-and-milk loveliness of the Alexandria Safe Zone (ASZ) – motto: “The only thing to fear is fear itself … oh, and a quietly menacing Carol (Melissa McBride) … and Rick going postal (Andrew Lincoln) … and an absentminded Gabriel … OK pretty much fear everything OK?” – and the actual far more subtle dramatic climax than we were actually given, The Walking Dead discovered the power of suggesting something could happen rather than actually having it happen.
Sure, it looked for most of “Try” like Rick, Carol and Daryl’s (Norman Reedus) plan to stockpile guns and take the ASZ by force if necessary – the better to show they know, and only they know, poor zombie apocalypse-hardened souls that they are, what’s what and who’s who in this brave new world, my dear – was going to have to be put into action, but this was clearly just a great big old undead red herring because as “Conquer” unfurled, what we ended up with was drama yes but not Jim, as we have come to know it from The Walking Dead.
In fact, rather than the customary finale bloodbath of epic proportions, what we got was a sort of intimate bloodletting which ended up taking only two lives of people we know – that of Reg Monroe (Steve Coulter) and Pete (Corey Brill) who died in the middle of the town forum that was supposed to hang, draw and exile Rick from the ASZ; Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) wasn’t handling her grief at all well and was determined to make Rick pay, come what may – and two unnamed people, both of whom met fates most foul out beyond the walls.
This didn’t for one second lessen the impact of these deaths – Deanna’s will-she-regret-this-in-the-morning almost-immediate instruction in the light of her husband’s shocking accidental death at Pete’s katana-wielding hands to have Rick assassinate the domestic abusing surgeon was a profound moment, not least because now Rick has executed someone, not just killed to survive – nor what they will mean to the future of the ASZ itself.
For one thing, any innocent ideas that the outside world couldn’t intrude on their walker-free idyll has now been blown to kingdom come, a victim of a night that saw Rick having to fend and kill a group of zombies who came surging in to the ASZ after Gabriel, fresh from yet again weeping pointlessly in a prone position in the middle of the road (how does this man not die? He’s Teflon-proof against undead-ism godammit!), absentmindedly forgot to close the gate behind him (as you do; I mean it’s happened to all of us at one time or another right? Um, NO).
And one that saw Rick inadvertently resurrecting that hoary old chestnut, the Ricktatorship, in front of all the ASZ community, many of whom are still convinced after Rick’s gun-wielding rantings of “Try” that he is a few walkers short of a full shambling herd.
And yet for all this gripping action – Rick saving the ASZ from rambling walkers, killing one by gruesomely and bloodily punching his hand slowly through its head, Glenn (Steven Yeun) battling Nicholas (Michael Traynor) out in the woods and sparing his life, and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) almost killing the seemingly un-killable Father Gabriel – the episode was manifestly small “d” drama.
This is not meant as any kind of adverse criticism; rather it is a good thing, a sign that we might be past the slash-and-burn kill-ALL-the-bad-guys-and-maybe-burn-them-too policies of old – policies that it must be said were necessary to keep the group alive and in one piece but which would have felt like a tiresome retread if used in the context of the ASZ, a place Rick had decided, at Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) urging, he wants to call home.
Rick’s actions were for the most part unplanned and unintended.
Though Carol has urged him to take his hidden gun to the forum called to decide his fate – one by the way he didn’t make it to what with walker-battling and such going on – and take people hostage to get his way, he appeared to have discarded that as an option as he began walking to the meeting.
That doesn’t mean he had stopped thinking that the “children” of the ASZ, as Carol scornfully and dismissively termed them – her new Stepford Wives hiding Rambo persona is veering between amusing and just plain grating – as needing some instruction on the etiquette of staying alive in a walker-infested world but he realised he needed to do that without, as Talking Deads would put it, burning down the house.
In other words, the survival baby was not about to be thrown out with the ASZ bathwater, a sign that though he is teetering on the edge of madness and most likely can’t go back to who he used to be – a recurring theme throughout season 5 that got another airing in “Conquer” – he is sane to realise that what he, and more importantly, Carl and Judith, have in the ASZ is a CHANCE.
A real chance at something approaching a normal life, or what passes for normal in the new world, one that Michonne too has repeatedly told him they all need.
Quite where it will go from here is another matter entirely with Deanna in a very bad, grief-stricken place (though aware finally it seems that the outside world is BAD), Rick clearly at the end of his tether (though resolute) and tensions aplenty between Rick’s group and the shocked ASZers but one things looks certain – Rick isn’t going anywhere.
There is a new sheriff in town – OK a new new sheriff but you know what I mean – who’s not about to let Business As Usual carry on if it means people, and most importantly his people, keep dying.
And speaking of people dying, Aaron (Ross Marquand) and Daryl came incredibly close to doing just that , trapped in a, it must be said, rather sturdy car while four semi-trailers of artfully-captured and arranged walkers, courtesy of the mysterious bloodthirsty gang the Wolves who do NOT play nice with others and have a love of tattooing W on their heads and tat of their victims, besieged them.
Let that be a lesson to you Aaron – don’t think with your stomach! (They ended up trapped in the yard of an abandoned food warehouse; oh the irony the irony as the walkers sought to feed on them instead.)
Thankfully, Morgan (Lennie James), who opened “Conquer” with some deft Wolves despatching and the revelation that he is not the crazy man of old (season 3’s “Clear”) but rather a newly-emerged Zen warrior, saved their butts, his thanks being a swift induction to the ASZ (clearly saving the two recruiters from certain death carries with immediate and quantifiable benefits; good to know).
He arrived just in time, of course to see Rick kill Pete with Deanna’s permission, which must make him wonder just what the hell he has walked into.
We could all well ask the same, but suffice to say, “Conquer” with a sterling, beautifully understated but enormously powerful script by The Walking Dead‘s showrunner Scott Gimple and Seth Hoffman, and directed by make up man extraordinaire Greg Nicotero, was a more than worthy finale, which favoured intimacy over bombast, and profound meaning over meaningless bloodshed.
Now the hard work begins of course in truly merging the Rick’s group and the ASZ but you can be certain that come season 6 in October, we will be looking at a whole new world in northern Virginia, one which will be a challenge to all concerned.
But hark you say how will I cope walker-less till October, six long undead-free months hence?
Why with the new companion series to The Walking Dead, newly named as Fear the Walking Dead, the teaser trailer – and by teaser trailer I mean teaser trailer; all you pretty much get is a sunny radio announcer warning about a “flu” reported in five states, people looking mildly panicked and a sole walker shuffling down a concrete viaduct – for which was release during “Conquer”.
It looks like an interesting alternative take on the apocalyptic world created by Robert Kirkman with all the action starting before the world went mad, according to Cinemablend:
“Fear the Walking Dead initially takes place in the days before The Walking Dead originally kicked off, meaning it’ll start off as a prequel series. And that’s exactly what this teaser conveys, as it uses a Los Angeles radio broadcast to warn citizens in a sunshiny manner that there is some kind of an outbreak happening, as five states have reported weird viruses. Little do they know that it’s going to be one of the worst outbreaks the world has ever known. There’s just no vaccination for this kind of thing.”
The first season, which premieres over the US summer on AMC, is only six episodes long but the series has already been picked up for a second series which means we will be able to invest ourselves in another zombie-filled show without it shuffling off to undead TV show land.