If you feel like The Walking Dead is dragging its feet lately, you’re not the only one.
After watching The Walking Dead season 8 premiere, the biggest feeling I walked away with was how slow the entire episode felt. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that the season 7 premiere was so explosive, emotional, and had such a lasting effect on the fandom.
In comparison, the season 8 premiere feels weak and just like any old episode.
But there’s more to it than that. Much of The Walking Dead season 8 premiere is spent with the characters preparing for this big act that is supposed to go down with the Saviors. Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel give speeches to get everyone ready for what’s to come. They also have to physically prepare their vehicles, weapons, and routes.
Carol, Daryl, Tara, and Morgan work on getting a horde of walkers heading towards the Sanctuary as part of their plan. There are also flash forwards that don’t seem to serve much of a purpose other than making it seem like Rick has a future to look forward to.
All of these preparations that the group put together are to basically show Negan that they’re serious about taking him down. They don’t expect to kill Negan or take any of the Saviors out themselves. They do succeed in surrounding the Sanctuary with the horde of walkers though. With all of the weapons, vehicles, and supplies that the Saviors have access to, though, I don’t expect this will really do a large amount of damage.
I was also struck with the reality that the walkers don’t really pose that big of a threat anymore to the characters. That’s not to say that they can’t get killed by walkers, but they’re so adept at dealing with them now that the real danger is other people. Instead of being scared of the walkers and struggling, people are using walkers as weapons to use against each other.
There’s also the issue of just how much time is actually passing in these episodes overall. The entire timeline of last season took place over just a few weeks. So even though Maggie announced she was pregnant back in season 6, she still hasn’t reached her second trimester in season 8.
The audience has known about Maggie’s pregnancy since November of 2015 (two years!) but she still has a flat stomach. And it doesn’t look like fans will see her pop out that kid anytime soon.
Show creator Robert Kirkman did an interview with ComicBook.com and tried to explain the reasoning behind the slow timing of the show.
He stated, “I hope people would recognize that the slow periods, they’re absolutely essential to the high periods. If the show was high octane, all action at all times, if it was big characters dying non-stop, you would grow numb to that pretty quickly. Being able to pull the reins back and slow the show down is essential to longevity.”
I think fans can certainly appreciate the fact that the series can’t be running at full action all of the time. After all, they don’t want to see all of their favorite characters killed off and still want to see storylines that are fully fleshed out.
However, does that really mean that the show has to go at what feels like a snail’s pace? In trying to show all of the little details, it ends up feeling like the show is trying to stretch out storylines longer than they need to be, which is just frustrating.
Yes, fans will probably stick around to see what happens, but isn’t there value in keeping them entertained at the same time? If the show needs to take things slow, at least make it worth our time to stay up late on a Sunday night.
Even though The Walking Dead season 8 premiere left this viewer feeling underwhelmed, I’m still hopeful that the rest of the season will pick up with all of the promises of action that has been thrown around by the cast.
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