The Walking Dead season seven premiere has got me messed up. For real though, my heart is aching. If you’ve seen it and have followed this show for the past six seasons, then you will understand my reaction to such a troublesome episode. If you have yet to watch the premiere and are planning on it, you best stop reading this article.
Alright, let's get down to business and discuss. The recent season finale brought the heart wrenching deaths of two majors characters. RIP. When Glenn was mercilessly killed by the demented Negan I bawled. Don't get me wrong, I hated that Abraham was killed but I feel a stronger attachment to Glenn especially because he has been around since the beginning and was such a good guy! I'll miss Abraham's sassy attitude.
Ugh! This episode was seriously gruesome. I mean,Glenn's eye literally popped out of it’s socket while he was alive after the first time Negan hit him with his bat! This being said, dealing with taken Glenn's death could be more difficult than dealing with Abraham's, because it happened so unexpectedly. I was expecting only one major death, NOT TWO! I thought Glenn would be safe for awhile since the writers had all of us believing he had died when Nicholas died, but brought him back just to be ripped away less than a season later.
Then, Daryl had to go and punch Negan in the face, which is a reasonable reaction considering how awful Negan is. However, thinking about the situation from Negan's perspective, Rick and the gang did kill a lot of Negan's people. Though the decision to attack the Saviors made sense because Rick saw it has a method of survival. The attack got them food from Jesus's community, Hilltop, after all.
Then their was the whole Negan and Rick road trip which lasted for a good majority of the episode. That sequence was intense and broke down a lot of Rick's morals. Nearly having to chop off Carl's arm. Woah.
At the end of season six, the Saviors caused Denise’s death. In my opinion, this was important to the development of the show and however tragic.
The structure of the episode was overall effective in story development and engaging the viewers. Before the major deaths were revealed, we got short flashbacks of each character to make us question who was gonna die and set up the depressing mood. Separating Rick from his people right after Glenn and Abraham died was a real power move for Negan and starting with that and slowly leading back to the death scenes was interesting. Rick's dream of having all his people together and having dinner at the end of the episode was especially tearjerking; seeing what could have been with Glenn and Abraham still alive and Glenn and Maggie's baby getting to grow up with both parents was so depressing.
One of my favorite things about watching tv shows is the character development and this show is amazing at that which is why it is so awful to see the lose of two strong characters that we’ve got to watch grow through the seasons.
As sad as this episode is, I am looking forward to seeing where the show will go in the next season. The remaining characters took the deaths of Glenn and Abraham very hard so it will be interesting to see how they move forward especially with having to report to