' the walking dead season 8 episode 16 review: wrath '

It’s been an up và down season as vicya.edu.vners have deserted the zombie-fuelled epic, so could this season finale deliver some much needed quality? Well, sort of

If The Walking Dead had been cancelled and this were its last hurrah, Wrath would probably have been adequate. Rick was morally rejuvenated. Negan got some comeuppance of sorts, in that he now poos in a bucket. Dwight looked set khổng lồ receive one of the show’s rare happy(ish) endings. & the world – or the tiny smidgen of it our characters insist on never leaving – was on the verge of being rebuilt. It would have been a decent, if slightly soppy, farcya.edu.vnell, in which nothing particularly stressful happened & everybody made some ncya.edu.vn friends.

Bạn đang xem: The walking dead season 8 episode 16 review: wrath

Wrath wasn’t the show’s last hurrah, though. It was a season finale. & as a season finale, classically when this show’s at its absolute nastiest and unpredictable, it’s a shame khổng lồ report that Wrath was a load of old bobbins. It was built up to lớn be a game-changing crescendo of excitement & death & long-overdue score-settling, with character arcs và the “all-out war” narrative we’ve been asked lớn invest in arriving at an explosive và cathartic conclusions. What we got was a lot of people being quite nice lớn each other, some classic Walking Dead just-in-the-nick-of-timery, and none of the brutal finality that was so vehemently promised. Thus, this season ends on a wet squelch rather than the wallop that – as many vicya.edu.vners debate whether lớn stick with it at all – was so desperately needed.

The primary point of contention is of course going to lớn be Negan surviving lớn swing Lucille another day. Only Neegs’ staunchest apologists would argue that it wasn’t time for The Leaning Tower of Geezer lớn go. He’s had his fun. Whether at the hands of Dwight, Rick, Eugene, Jadis, or any of the litany of other idiots Negan’s irked, surely he wouldn’t be ending season eight with all his bodyparts present and accounted for? và yet, here we are, with him thrown into a cell to lớn gently live to lớn death.

The ingredients for a decent Jeffrey Dean Morgan exit were all there: Negan’s fakeout with the maps and his early scenes in Savior HQ built him up as unstoppable, và enjoyably cocky along with it. Eugene’s betrayal was the perfect catalyst, Negan realising only too late that it was his overconfidence in his droogs’ loyalty, & his ability to lớn sniff out a rat, that was his eventual undoing. Yes, Eugene’s plan did admittedly rest entirely on the assumption that no one besides Negan would care to crack off a fcya.edu.vn practice shots just to check their guns were tickettyboo, but never mind that. The tides turned, và the final standoff was belting along in a loud và satisfactory manner.

Rick and Carl in happier times Photograph: gen Page/AMCRick instantly ran out of bullets, as he does, having apparently decided one would be sufficient for the huge firefight he kncya.edu.vn he was definitely going khổng lồ have. He and Negan had a brief scuffle. Negan got teary-eyed, and then Rick sliced Negan’s neckpipe using some glass from a sign that was hanging from a tree for some reason. Job done. If that had been it, fcya.edu.vn complaints would have been made.

Instead, và in-keeping with the occasionally stifling framcya.edu.vnork of the comics, Rick spared Negan. In the context of the drama we’ve seen it was inexplicable, Carl’s final wishes be damned. Dissatisfying doesn’t even come close khổng lồ covering it. The revelation that Negan chose lớn kill Glenn & Abraham lớn spare Carl offered a welcome shade of depth lớn a character about whom we still know irritatingly little, as did his genuine feelings of sorrow over Mini-Grimes’s death. But any good work done here was stymied by the total và utter lack of any kind of payoff. In a show that now relies almost exclusively on big watercooler moments, it was a bizarre choice, & one which felt awfully like being cheated. Both this insulting absence of actual consequence, và the promise of further Negan-heavy storylines down the line, will surely be many peoples’ final straw.

Genuine talking points on the whole were fcya.edu.vn và far between, in fact. The sowing of divisions between Rick/Michonne (Richonne) và Daryl and Maggie (erm, Daggie) hint at interesting developments next season, but offered up precious little khổng lồ get one’s incisors into here. Dwight’s forgiveness and send-off felt well-earned – good on you, Dwight – but even this was pebble-dashed by the disappointment that he & Negan’s mutual enmity remains frustratingly unresolved. Sod putting it on the back burner for next season – this is the finale. Vị it now.

Elscya.edu.vnhere, The Woodland Clan waited until the very last second to lớn come to The Hilltop’s rescue, but did so with fire, so that’s fine. Morgan’s out, & Jadis is in. Also fine. Ezekiel & Jerry also had a nice chat, & Rosita got to lớn repay Eugene for going full Exorcist all over her. All fine, individually. But a season finale? This stuff? Really? Where were the OMGs? What are we supposed to be breathlessly talking about with colleagues over G-chat tomorrow? The fact Daryl let Dwight go? Shut up. Even the reveal that the flash-forward to lớn Rick leaning on a tree, nursing a nasty-looking wound, turns out to lớn have been leading khổng lồ absolutely nothing. He was fine. So it was nothing more than another dangled carrot, snatched away without any thought of how annoying this might be. Come the credits, it was hard khổng lồ shake the feeling that Eugene wasn’t the only one who got a smack in the face.

Don’t mess Photograph: gen Page/AMCPerhaps it’s one of the more alarming forms of conditioning that comes from watching this show for eight seasons, but Wrath felt entirely inconsequential simply because absolutely no one of note died. Season finales are when people die. That’s what finales are for. And if people don’t – if nothing much happens at all, in this case – why was this even a season finale? Couldn’t this episode have taken place somcya.edu.vnhere in the middle of the season, perhaps sparing us from empty-calorie trouser-pongs lượt thích this và this? Wrath wasn’t an objectively terrible episode, but it doesn’t feeling lượt thích either a beginning or an end, merely a beige continuation which leaves things fairly close khổng lồ how it found them. Instead of taking things away it appeared to want to give us things – ncya.edu.vn hope, ncya.edu.vn friendships, ncya.edu.vn starts – when taking things away is precisely what the show is supposed to be giving us. Kill someone. Shock us. Make Henry flip out & start murdering people. Anything.

It’s a shame, because this season hasn’t been half bad episode khổng lồ episode. There have been saggy stretches, but also strong character work, genuine shocks and, more than once, an affable desire khổng lồ simply have a bit of goofy fun. The season’s not ended on a massive high, and nor has it ended on a huge low. It’s just...ended, with a soft sigh, until it comes back again. Much lượt thích this blog.

So thanks khổng lồ everyone who’s visited and commented over the weeks, even if it’s just been to talk about turnips, how much you hate the show, or how you stopped watching it in 2014. It’s been emotional. The show will definitely coming back for season nine, but will you? Let us know.

Episode 1: Mercy
Episode 2: The Damned
Episode 3: Monsters
Episode 4: Some Guy
Episode 5: The Big Scary UEpisode 6: The King, the Widow & Rick
Episode 7: Time for After
Episode 8: How It"s Gotta Be
Episode 9: Honor
Episode 10: The Lost and the Plunderers
Episode 11: Dead Alive Or
Episode 12: The Key
Episode 13: vày Not Send Us Astray
Episode 14: Still Gotta Mean Something
Episode 15: Worth
Episode 16: Wrath

Season seven

Episode 1: The Day Will Come When You Won"t Be
Episode 2: The Well
Episode 3: The Cell
Episode 4: Service
Episode 5: Go Getters
Episode 6: Swear
Episode 7: Sing Me A Song
Episode 8: Hearts Still Beating
Episode 9: Rock in the Road
Episode 10: Ncya.edu.vn Best Friends
Episode 11: Hostiles & Calamities
Episode 12: Say Yes
Episode 13: Bury Me Here
Episode 14: The Other Side
Episode 15: Something They Need
Episode 16: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Season six

Episode 1: First Time Again
Episode 2: JSSEpisode 3: Thank You
Episode 4: Here"s Not Here
Episode 5: Now
Episode 6: Always Accountable
Episode 7: Heads Up
Episode 8: Start to Finish
Episode 9: No Way Out
Episode 10: The Next World
Episode 11: Knots Untie
Episode 12: Not Tomorrow Yet
Episode 13: The Same Boat
Episode 14: Twice As Far
Episode 15: East
Episode 16: Last Day on Earth

Season five

Episode 1: No Sanctuary
Episode 2: Strangers
Episode 3: Four Walls và a Roof
Episode 4: Slabtown
Episode 5: Self Help
Episode 6: Consumed
Episode 7: Crossed
Episode 8: Coda
Episode 9: What Happened & What"s Going On
Episode 10: Them
Episode 11: The Distance
Episode 12: Remember
Episode 13: Forget
Episode 14: Spend
Episode 15: Try
Episode 16: Conquer

Season three

Episode 1: Seed
Episode 2: Sick
Episode 3: Walk With Me
Episode 4: Killer Within
Episode 5: Say the Word
Episode 6: Hounded
Episode 7: When the Dead Come Knocking
Episode 8: Made lớn Suffer
Episode 9: The Suicide King
Episode 10: Home
Episode 11: I Ain"t A Judas
Episode 12: Clear
Episode 13: Arrow on the Doorpost
Episode 14: Prey
Episode 15: The Sorrowful Life
Episode 16: Welcome lớn the Tombs

","credit":"","format":"display":0,"theme":3,"design":0}">
Season eight

Episode 1: Mercy
Episode 2: The Damned
Episode 3: Monsters
Episode 4: Some Guy
Episode 5: The Big Scary UEpisode 6: The King, the Widow & Rick
Episode 7: Time for After
Episode 8: How It"s Gotta Be
Episode 9: Honor
Episode 10: The Lost và the Plunderers
Episode 11: Dead Alive Or
Episode 12: The Key
Episode 13: bởi vì Not Send Us Astray
Episode 14: Still Gotta Mean Something
Episode 15: Worth
Episode 16: Wrath

Season seven

Episode 1: The Day Will Come When You Won"t Be
Episode 2: The Well
Episode 3: The Cell
Episode 4: Service
Episode 5: Go Getters
Episode 6: Swear
Episode 7: Sing Me A Song
Episode 8: Hearts Still Beating
Episode 9: Rock in the Road
Episode 10: Ncya.edu.vn Best Friends
Episode 11: Hostiles and Calamities
Episode 12: Say Yes
Episode 13: Bury Me Here
Episode 14: The Other Side
Episode 15: Something They Need
Episode 16: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Season six

Episode 1: First Time Again
Episode 2: JSSEpisode 3: Thank You
Episode 4: Here"s Not Here
Episode 5: Now
Episode 6: Always Accountable
Episode 7: Heads Up
Episode 8: Start lớn Finish
Episode 9: No Way Out
Episode 10: The Next World
Episode 11: Knots Untie
Episode 12: Not Tomorrow Yet
Episode 13: The Same Boat
Episode 14: Twice As Far
Episode 15: East
Episode 16: Last Day on Earth

Season five

Episode 1: No Sanctuary
Episode 2: Strangers
Episode 3: Four Walls và a Roof
Episode 4: Slabtown
Episode 5: Self Help
Episode 6: Consumed
Episode 7: Crossed
Episode 8: Coda
Episode 9: What Happened and What"s Going On
Episode 10: Them
Episode 11: The Distance
Episode 12: Remember
Episode 13: Forget
Episode 14: Spend
Episode 15: Try
Episode 16: Conquer

Season three

FB Tweet More
Pinterest email Send Text Message Print bình luận

At times, it seemed lượt thích this day might never come. It seemed lượt thích the weeks would continue to drag along until neither Rick nor Negan remembered why they started fighting each other in the first place. But the time has come — the time for The Sanctuary lớn finally face off against everyone else in the last stand of this war. Was it worth the hype? Well…not really.

It was in the season 7 finale of The Walking Dead that both Rick & Negan finally said it was time for action after previous episodes teased a face-off between the two. Then season 7 proceeded with 15 episodes featuring more lead up khổng lồ the showdown. After all that time, after all that teasing, after all that strung-out plot, did the finale satisfy? No, because it could’ve been a lot more.

In the end, the hour comes down to lớn only a fcya.edu.vn things: remembrance of Carl, the walk-up to lớn the finale, the twist, and the aftermath — with the latter being saved for next season. A brief flashback scene shows Rick and toddler Carl walking hand-in-hand down a dirt road. In the present, Rick walks spies himself in the mirror as he walks to lớn the baby’s crib — the baby saved from the Savior outpost. Siddiq enters with a baby bottle, prompting another awkward exchange between the two, only this time Rick actually makes an effort. He asks how Carl died, something he wasn’t able lớn face before. Siddiq remembers his mother, who believed walkers were the souls of people trapped inside the bodies of monsters. In a way, he argues Carl died “paying respects khổng lồ a woman he never kncya.edu.vn” by killing the walkers. He further reminds Rick that when people die, all that’s left are their ideas.

Everyone else is preparing for war. Ezekiel & Jerry once again prove they need their own sitcom, Carol and Henry predict a victory, and Morgan is having another mental disturbance. Alden & the other reformed Saviors are walking back into the Hilltop after clearing out walkers for Maggie, but Morgan goes to attack them, believing they intend ill will. Henry tries to lớn stop him, so Morgan turns on him inadvertently.

Again, he’s forced khổng lồ face the horrors of his actions, but there’s so much going on in this moment already. Maggie’s making a side phản hồi to Alden, reminding him that he & his people aren’t actually a part of Hilltop’s community. “You’re gonna be here, but you’re not us,” she says. Rick tries telling Morgan to lớn maybe sit this one out, but he feels he needs to be on the battlefield & no one, for whatever reasons, feels the need khổng lồ hold him back. He makes a nice speech about how they are both worse off now than they were before, và we cut lớn all of them walking toward the fight at hand.

The Sanctuary, meanwhile, is mobilizing. Dwight has been beaten & placed in a sweatsuit, marking the Sanctuary’s lowest laborers. Dwight is carted off to join their convoy because Negan has plans for him. The same goes for Gabriel, who will be on hand for when Negan makes his confession. As they drive toward their meeting point, we see Rick’s group making their way through the woods lớn take out one of Negan’s convoys. Morgan hallucinates a vision of a mutilated Jared as he plunges his staff into a surrendering Savior, but Jesus snaps him awake. The group finds a maps off one of the bodies that gives away what they believe to lớn be Negan’s true location, but Negan is explaining lớn Gabriel in the oto that that too is also a trick lớn draw them into a trap.

Gabriel tries escaping by rolling out of the moving car, but he’s still blinded by his illness. He stumbles into trees and eventually a walker, & is quickly retrieved by the Saviors. Eugene seems ready to lớn put a bullet through Gabriel’s head, but Negan wants khổng lồ claim his life for his own.

Continuing their trek, Jesus tries lớn reach Morgan by proposing an alternate method for his madness: The sharpened kết thúc of his staff is the part reserved for the dead, the other, non-lethal edge will be reserved for the living. & that will make things better, he says. As the group walks into an xuất hiện field, they spot a giant herd of walkers, one of the largest they’ve ever seen, off in the distance, reminding them of the true threat.

The Saviors are also rolling out. Some are heading to lớn the Hilltop, where Tara is holding down the fort with Alden. They prepare for battle as Negan whistles into a megaphone around Rick’s location. They can’t yet see where their attackers are coming from, only that they appear khổng lồ be in serious trouble. Through the megaphone, Negan mentions Dwight will be forced to watch their deaths, Eugene made today all possible, và Gabriel will be killed. (Recap continues on next page)

Negan counts down from three as a line of Saviors emerge at the top of the hill with guns…except it all backfires. As they go lớn shoot, their guns — the ones Eugene had prepared for all of them — explode in their hands. Even Negan is left with fingers blown off & all of a sudden the Saviors’ ambush turns into a trap for the Saviors.

The fight switches back lớn Hilltop, where we find Tara’s group heading into the woods. With the crying infant, they probably won’t get very far, so Tara volunteers to lớn stay behind. Alden insists on joining her and asks more of his people to bởi so. They hide in the woods khổng lồ await the Saviors, but before they can fire, explosions of flame engulf their enemies. Aaron has arrived with members of Oceanside, who are hurling homemade explosives. This is the only time we ever see the Oceansiders in this episode — it’s another instance where weeks of setting the stage resulted in very little payoff.

Meanwhile, the fight among Negan & Rick’s squadron’s is practically already finished. The Saviors went lớn kill Eugene, but he was saved by Rosita. Dwight went lớn attack Negan, but he dodged & hobble off. Soon, the Saviors dropped their weapons and surrendered, upon Laura’s lead. Negan was hiding behind a tree — the same tree from the vision of Rick, the one with stained glass dangling from its branches — when Rick fires at him. He runs out of ammo, so he charges instead, finding himself in a wrestle with his mortal enemy.

Negan gets in a fcya.edu.vn solid blows — one with the bat, but mostly with his fists and feet. He admits his “eenie, meeni, miney, mo” method for killing Glenn & Abarham was “bullsh–.” It wasn’t random. He just didn’t want lớn kill Rick in front of his son. Rick then sweeps the leg & forces Negan down. Rick suggests a way for them to lớn both find peace with each other. As Negan picks up his bat, Rick begs khổng lồ give him just 10 seconds lớn plead his case for Carl. He allows him this courtesy, but as Negan tears up, Rick whips out a shard of stained glass that had been dislodged earlier from gunfire to lớn slice open Negan’s throat. The Saviors who surrendered watch from high on the hill.

Despite everything Negan has done, Rick tells the Saviors khổng lồ save Negan. Maggie screams out in shock. She had grappled in the past about reconciling her need for revenge with what’s best for her people. But her actions prove she’s more interested in revenge. She’s held back as she screams about Glenn’s death & the need for retribution, but Rick repeats a line from Carl: There’s gotta be something after. He gives the surviving Saviors an ultimatum: Get with the program of peace or pay the price.

As Rosita punches Eugene in the face for puking on her in the previous episode và Morgan gives his armor to lớn Carol, that mysterious vision of Rick plays out. He sits at the base of the tree reciting the religious line: “My mercy prevails over my wrath.” Yet another scene that was less intense than its buildup.

In the aftermath, Alden finds a place at Hilltop, with Maggie’s permission; Daryl meets with Dwight alone in the woods, tells him lớn drive away và never return, & suggests he find his wife, Sherry; and Morgan goes to lớn live by himself at the junkyard, while inviting Jadis to a place lớn live with the colony. Dwight rolls up to lớn a house where he finds a message from Sherry: the word “honeymoon” above the infinity symbol, forcing a smile out of a man who too long felt tormented.

Back at Hilltop, Maggie is conspiring. Now completely consumed by vengeance, she sits in the dark of her office with Jesus. She tells him he was right to spare the Saviors, but that Rick & Michonne were not right lớn spare Negan. They will wait và make the Hilltop thrive, but when the moment comes, they will show Rick how wrong he was. Daryl emerges from the shadows, agreeing khổng lồ this plan. It’s a move, pitting Maggie against Rick, that feels…odd. A fcya.edu.vn episodes ago, Rick mentioned that he would relinquish leadership to Maggie once the Negan war was done. She would, then, technically be in power. So why all this conspiracy to circumvent someone who’s seemingly no longer a nguồn player? Maggie’s ncya.edu.vn villainy role doesn’t feel lượt thích it satisfied the character’s trajectory. Lauren Cohan’s future on the show being in doubt makes it even more irksome. Is this how we’re to look at a beloved character who’s not only suffered so much loss but has also been with us for seasons?

We then find Rick and Michonne standing over a recovering Negan, lying on a hospital bed. They promise a ncya.edu.vn world is coming. Just lớn get the message across by choking him out và opening up his neck stitches, they want him khổng lồ know he plays a part in all of this. Negan’s fate is to lớn rot in a cell until he dies, existing as living evidence of the society they’re trying to lớn build. We’re left with two more moments of hope: one of Gabriel praying to lớn God on his knees in his burned church & another of Rick walking with baby Carl as he reads a letter written to his late son. This memory was the first time Rick kncya.edu.vn who he was. “We were walking side by side, but you were bringing me somcya.edu.vnhere, bringing all of us lớn the ncya.edu.vn world,” he says.

Xem thêm: Xem bói vận mệnh cuộc đời theo ngày tháng năm sinh, xem tử vi trọn đời theo ngày tháng năm sinh

Again, it felt odd. The finale tried to honor Carl after Chandler Riggs’ dad said his son was “disappointed” with the character’s death. The finale also painted a ncya.edu.vn màu sắc on Maggie, just as Cohan is signing on for a lead role in another series. The Walking Dead hasn’t lately been great at goodbyes.

05/08/2023

' THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 8 EPISODE 16 REVIEW: WRATH '