The Historic Downfall of The Walking Dead

refrigerator It's strange to think that there was a time when The Walking Dead was my favorite television show. He feels very distant now, but I used to be a big fan of this show. I started watching it around 2013, I think when the third season was airing. and I was obsessed like a lot of people, it's easy to forget, but in 2013 The Walking Dead was one of the biggest pop culture phenomena, since this show was very important at that time, either you watched The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones or both of us and that's what everyone talked about, even in my own Circle, it was the most important thing we would do at giant parties every week, bringing together friends, family from different generations, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, cousins, you name it, it was an event every Sunday. night and around season 5 The Walking Dead was the most watched television series in the world, the audience figures it obtained each week were astronomical and the success of the program seemed impossible to stop, it was a success unlike anything we had ever seen. seen before until it appeared.

In my opinion and in the opinion of many, The Walking Dead is perfect, a great example of a show that far outstayed its welcome. It's a show that gambled too much with its audience and refused to give up while it was ahead and now. The entirety of The Walking Dead as a franchise feels like a pale shadow of what it was before and, more importantly, it feels like a pale shadow of what it could have been because yeah, when you really look at it, it's hard to deny than this program. I had a kind of

historic

fall.

I've wanted to talk about The Walking Dead on the network for a long time, but I always wanted to wait for the show to end, which is something that seemed impossible a couple of years ago. Oh, when? Will finish? The Walking Dead was known for its tendency to drag things out infinitely, but last November, after 11 very long seasons, it actually ended and I've been sitting with some thoughts since I watched the end of this series and I want to talk. about it because I think the ending of The Walking Dead illustrates an issue that's been bothering a lot of people lately, even internet idiots like me, and I think it's interesting to try to examine what's probably considered the biggest fall from grace. in television history, but before we do, I think it's important to take a look at The Walking Dead's early years on television.

The Walking Dead premiered on Halloween night 2010 and, for the uninitiated, the show tells the story of Rick Grimes I. m Andrew Lincoln, aka Ricky Dicky Doo Dog Rhymes, a Georgia deputy sheriff who receives a shot while on duty and wakes up from a coma about a month later, but when he wakes up he finds that the world has been destroyed and society has collapsed into a brutal state. Zombie Apocalypse is completely disoriented, terrified, and very shaken by the fact that he was killed by a shotgun. Rick Ventures leaves the hospital and tries to navigate the city to try to find his wife Laurie and his son Carl, so the series essentially follows Rick. and a group of survivors as they try to stay alive in the apocalypse facing off against the un

dead

or, worse yet, other groups of survivors.

The show goes through many different incarnations throughout its run. Most seasons have a total of 16 episodes divided into two 8-episode stories in each episode and the writers tried to gently reinvent the show in each half and that ability to constantly redefine itself was one of Walking Dead's greatest strengths, but It ultimately also became one of their biggest problems. See the only thing I find interesting about the fall of The Walking Dead is that fans have different notions of when the show was officially

dead

, that's probably because it has a number of low points narratively, but also because it often managed to recover from somehow and, despite its unimaginably massive

downfall

, the show did it. maintain a sort of cult following until the end and most people maintain a strong attachment to the early days of the series.

Season 1 is largely considered a fantastic season of television and I think it holds up pretty well, it has an incredibly strong pilot. Great characters, great pacing, mainly because the first season is the shortest season of the show at only six episodes. It does an incredible job of establishing the rules of the world and introducing the characters and the different dynamics, other than Rick, his wife Lori, and his son Carl. we meet a larger cast that becomes an integral part of the show Glenn Carol Shane Morgan and of course fan favorite Daryl Dixon. The season is short but packed with solid writing and excellent direction, making it exciting and extremely memorable.

Season 2, however, is a bit more of a mixed bag for people, though many appreciate its character work and skillful displays of tension. The season also faced a lot of criticism for its slow pacing and lack of action and it's really understandable after the fast-paced season one for most of season 2. It takes place on a farm and deals with the characters trying to find a little girl. that disappeared. It's a very different dynamic than what season one gave us, and many people describe season 2 as mostly boring and uneventful. It's also often pointed out that Season 2 might have taken a dip in quality due to the departure of the original showrunner at the end of Season 1.

Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle, but I think it can mostly be left up to of people who need to get used to the tradition of the program. of reinventing itself in each new arc, but for me this season is flawed but still pretty solid, the show's tension comes from the character's interpersonal relationships and its conflicts carry a lot of weight, especially when it comes to Rick and Shane's slow descent into The madness. in season 2 is still one of my favorite stories on the show and the overall character developed by the entire cast is just amazing, short story season 2 has some low points but when it works it really works season 3 is Considered by several fans to simply be the best season of The Walking Dead and it is not difficult to see why seasons 1 and 2 were very different and as far as their individual qualities are concerned, season 3 was the best of both worlds, although it managed Improving their already incredible character work this season was also allowed to move around a bit more.

It is action packed and fast paced. There is much more at stake. It introduces new characters that are mostly awesome, and of course, this is the season that also introduces the show's first real villain. the governor was an incredibly menacing psychopath with an eye patch and people loved him. Season 3 also received praise for the way it explored the psychological aspects of his characters. It is the point where the story shows how this zombie apocalypse affects the character's mental health. and the writers handle it in a way that was incredibly intriguing and at times emotional. It's probably not the most realistic depiction of mental health, but to this day the telephone twist in season 3 still gives me goosebumps.

I will always remember the first time I saw him. For those who don't know, it's a story where Rick receives a phone call from people who are willing to help the group. He talks to them several times trying to find a way to meet them. He spends entire days waiting by the phone. having them call them until he realizes, with a punch to the gut from a Twist, that these people don't exist, that the phone he's using doesn't even work, and that he hallucinated the whole thing; It's an incredibly well-executed bait and switch that doesn't just crush hope. from the audience and the characters, but it's also a crushing revelation to the audience that they really spent this entire season watching the hero of the show slowly lose his sanity, long story short, season 3 is the season that really won the audience over and catapulted the show to the top of the pop culture pyramid, this is the season where The Walking Dead truly became must-see TV.

The internet couldn't get enough of ah, okay, this is where things get a little tricky, so bear with me, I think the first one. Signs of trouble for The Walking Dead really started to show in season four, more specifically in the second half of season four, while the first half served as the final chapter of the very popular Governor's Arc, the rest of the season is the beginning of the Terminus Arc. and this is where the show undergoes a massive shift in its storytelling that became one of the main reasons for its eventual

downfall

and that's because the Terminus Arc marks the beginning of what I like to call The Walking Dead's Boomerang narrative.

By that I mean that the second half of Season 4 sees the aftermath of Rick and his group's final showdown against the Governor and his forces. Their Sanctuary was destroyed as a result of the battle and the entire group was separated in the process of escaping the chaos so the show now had to follow micro groups of characters scattered around different parts of the map, trying to find their friends and family and trying to survive in the wild. Now, in theory, that's totally fine. You can easily make that work by separating your episodes into two. or three story lines, we could jump from plot A to plot B to maybe plot C and everything would be fine, that's what most TV shows do, but instead of doing that, producer Scott Gimple Hooped was also the showrunner at the time and chose to do things differently.

It's where he began experimenting with Boomerang storytelling, aka the idea of ​​dedicating an entire episode to a single character or a single group of characters. Basically, this narrative structure is that one story is the focus of an episode and has some sort of rotation throughout the season. To simplify it, it means that episode 1 would focus on story 1, episode 2 would focus on the story. 2, episode 3 into story 3, episode 4 into story 4 and then episode 5 would go full circle and back to story one and then that same cycle would continue. until all the stories converge into one for the end, do I have to explain why that model sucks?

This narrative structure was incredibly irritating because it made the show's continuity a drag, undoing the momentum of virtually every story in the season, which is only made worse by the fact that it would include plot threads that people would be into. interested, but then it would constantly get ruined because you'd basically watch an episode about Rick and follow him through a story that was exciting and thrilling and full of tension and it would end on a strong cliffhanger and people would be talking about it and talking about it online and everyone would be excited about the next episode, but then you tune in the next week and the next episode is about another character in another place doing other things. then you'd wait until the next week, but the next episode would be about another supporting character in his own corner of the show doing other things and so on, so you'd see the cool episode with Rick and his awesome Cliffhanger, but then you'd have to wait like a month to see where it goes because the show gave you three weeks of filler stories that could have easily been combined into one episode you basically just had to wait for the main story to come back like a boomerang yeah that's a terrible narrative choice that slowed down the show and created a really frustrating experience for viewers.

People expected it to be short-lived, but it wasn't because this storytelling model turned out to be a flaw that dragged the show down. until the end of season 8, but let's go back as these issues started to appear in season 4, people still absolutely loved the show during that time, it's something that people noticed, but it wasn't an issue yet. I mentioned it before but season 5 is the point where The Walking Dead peaked as a show, the ratings for season 5 were crazy, it was the biggest TV show in the world, an absolute pop culture phenomenon as We had never seen before and again every episode was a massive event, the show seemed Unstoppable and then came the sixth season, the sixth season was a defining point for The Walking Dead, a definitive entry that saw a major change and extremely important not only because of some narrative choices that didn't turn out well, but also because season 6 is the point. where the fandom first started to have some real problems with the show, problems that they found difficult to ignore, was the point at which the audience began to express their problems with the show very openly.

Looking back, I thinkSeason 6 can reasonably be reframed as the beginning of the end for The Walking Dead because, while seasons 4 and 5 made some clumsy decisions and experiments that didn't quite sit with fans, season 6 was the definitive point at which the show began to make fatal mistakes, he would never do it. recover for one at this point Scott Gimple seemed determined to have boomerang narration become the main narrative structure for the show, he was using it constantly and audiences were really starting to feel its effects, the show was getting boring in some points. It took forever to get to the point, if it ever did, and the exciting, thrilling nature of the story became something of a weirdo usually reserved for premieres and finales, as the rest of the season felt like it was losing the weather on purpose over the course of the season. 6 from the first few episodes there was some frustration that started to grow among the fandom at first, it was a little tame because it seemed to be the only major problem people had with the show, but that quickly changed for the worse and made it shorter.

Scott Gimple and the writers were starting to rely on sheep tricks to annoy the audience and drive the show's plot. These cheap gimmicks came in different forms that seemed to annoy different fans, but it was only a matter of time before they came out with the one cheap gimmick that would piss everyone off and turn that frustration into a real reaction against the show. At the rate they were going it was just a matter of time before the show made its first fatal mistake and that fatal mistake inevitably came in episode 7 of the sixth season where the writers pulled a card that forever changed the audience's perception of the show. and that now the infamous fatal mistake was Glenn's fake death.

Now it's important to point out to anyone watching this who hasn't seen The Walking Dead that in its early years one of the most important elements that made the show so incredibly exciting is the fact. which established from the beginning that this was a story in which no one was safe. The Walking Dead was a show where anyone could die. They knew that if they wanted the elements of the show to feel real, the audience needed to feel and see that constant danger that could only be achieved effectively by killing the main characters in the most brutal and shocking ways and they achieved it, they really achieved it very well. , it was a big thing, every time something happened on the show, the audience was tense. being on the edge of your seat holding your breath and clenching your butt because any action sequence meant you were probably about to watch your favorite character get eaten by zombies or have his head cut off was so stressful and they didn't even keep it . the debts of big characters for big moments like the end of a season or something, sometimes a main character would just die in the middle of a random episode in a gruesome and brutal way and then the show would have to continue immediately because we have urgency .

We have to survive and that was an element of the story that really contributed to their high statuses; However, over time, this aspect of the show became less of a necessary narrative device and instead slowly became a strange, cheap gimmick used primarily for shock value characters who began to feel like they no longer had reason and most of the main actors began to develop a fairly thick plot, meaning that most of the brutal death scenes were given to secondary characters that people didn't really care about. It all became White Noise and five or six seasons on the Gore end of the show had lost their impact, people were used to it now so the gimmick was reduced to shock value that wasn't shocking, so I tried to put together some excitement in the fans.

Scott Gimple and the writers made a very, very bad decision, a bad decision that was a big mix of bad writing, cheap shock value, and a lethal dose of boomerang storytelling, huh, what the hell, let me explain this to you in the episode 3 of season 6? a scene where fan favorite Glenn Ree takes on a pack of zombies with another character. Simply put, they have to retreat to an alley where they are completely surrounded and their only protection is their ability to climb onto a dumpster where they are. Completely trapped at this point, Nicholas, the other character with Glenn, is completely overwhelmed by the situation and there seems to be no immediate solution to save them, so Nicholas completely panics and almost seems to dissociate for a brief but tense moment. , after which he turns around.

He turns around to stun Glenn and thanks him, then grabs his gun and shoots himself in the head as he falls to the ground. He accidentally takes Glenn with him and they both fall out of the dumpster. The scene is then overtaken by sad music as we look at Glenn. Being brutally torn apart by the zombies and then cut to Black immediately after the scene aired, the audience erupted on social media, it was an absolute whirlwind, but not in the way you'd expect, where Scott Gimple and the people behind from the program they expected it to be the scene.

They were met with the same sense of shock and horror as the previous main character, but this time they were met with a surprising amount of frustration. It turns out that most of the audience immediately realized that something about Glenn's death scene was wrong, and it wasn't. It won't be long before everyone believes that he didn't actually die. This has to be false. That's not Glenn. That can't be Glenn. He was pretending. The necklace above them is not Glenn English. They have to do it. Being good at Nicholas, that really pissed people off because resorting to faking debts like this to try to generate excitement in the audience was solidifying for a lot of fans that the show was losing Steam and they were mad at the writers for doing something like that. manipulative and foolish to a large extent, which is something they never had to do before, but despite the frustration at the time, there was still no confirmation of anything, so people decided to give the show the benefit of the doubt and everyone They agreed to wait.

Episode 4 will be out next week to see what happens with Glenn. The problem is remembering that the show was now operating on Boomerang's narration and that didn't really help matters. The following week episode 4 came out and there was no mention of Glenn. People were really upset. for that episode 5 came out the week after there is still no Glenn, now people were getting really angry, but another week later episode 6 came out and there is still no mention of Glenn. I wish I was kidding, but no, it's not until episode 7. A month later, the show finally revolved around Glenn again and we were able to find out his fate one episode before the midseason finale, so after all this I'll let you imagine the uproar that arose from the audience when they found them.

I found out that all those theories about the fake death scene were correct. Glenn didn't die, he wasn't torn apart by the Walkers, that was Nicholas' body on top of him. Glenn actually survived by slipping under the dumpster and waiting 24 hours for the zombies to arrive and just leave and then he got up and just left, making the whole thing a huge waste of time. This was a very specific turning point for the show, one that fundamentally broke trust between the audience and the writers and that was the first fatal point. mistake, the show made people feel betrayed, they felt like they were wasting their time, boomerang storytelling was now an inevitable problem that everyone was all too aware of, and the writers who started relying on outlandish fakeouts for a manufactured drama they made people instantly worry about the future. of the show, especially since spoiler alert Glenn would end up dying for real just nine episodes later, but we'll get to that in a minute After that debacle, the show moved on and the rest of season six served as a great piece of narrative building .

Set for the long-awaited arrival of The Walking Dead's most notorious villain, Negan Negan is introduced in the season 6 finale when he appears in one of my favorite scenes of the entire show. He spent the entire second half of the season in the shadows cheating. Rick and his group were born in Mercy as Revenge after they killed some of his people and he completely overcame them after the audience heard his name in almost every episode of the season. He finally reveals himself in the last third of the finale, the introduction to him. The scene is incredibly tense and he addresses the group for the first time in an 11-minute monologue performed brilliantly by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

You're right I'm Negan and I don't appreciate you killing my men too when I sent my people to kill your people for killing my people you killed more my people it's not okay I don't want to kill you people I just want to make that clear from the beginning I want you to work for me you can't do that if They're already dead, can they listen? Don't any of you do that again. I will close it without exceptions, the first one is free. It's an emotional moment. I understand it honestly. This scene is so good. Sometimes I just go on YouTube to watch it randomly.

It's a masterclass in tension, it's incredibly well acted, but while Negan's arrival is easily one of my favorite scenes in the entire show, it's also the scene that made millions of people on The Walking Dead angry because it turned out the end of the season. to be the show's second fatal mistake, whether you've seen the show or not, you've probably heard of the absolute scandal created by what is essentially considered the worst Cliffhanger in television history, it made people so angry that it literally broke the internet was completely crazy, seriously, the reaction was so bad that Scott Gimple had to address the press, actors tried to defend the decision in interviews, people were screaming for Scott Gimbal to be fired, they denounced the manipulative antics of the show, it was such a show What was the Cliffhanger?

Long after Negan finishes his incredible monologue, he lets Rick and the gang know that he will punish their arrogance by brutally murdering one of the gang with his baseball bat. He wants everyone to watch as he hits someone's head with the same violence. As you can now, it's a very famous scene from the comics that the show is adapted from and people really wanted to see it adapted because there were a lot of questions about whether the show was going to cast the same victim as the comics or instead . opting to kill off another character to keep the surprise going as the finale approached, the people behind the show promised a major death, they told people they'd be surprised when they see who dies, so everyone tuned in Scott Gimple was overreacting so much the ending everyone was completely Intrigued by the arrival of this Negan guy, the excitement was at its peak and then Negan shows up, announces he's going to kill someone, lifts his bat and smashes it, you hear people scream and then it happens to Black, yeah, that's not a joke after all. this buildup after all the promise and hype, the season 6 finale ends without actually showing you who Negan kills, he hits the camera and then cuts to Black, it's a cheap and infuriating cliffhanger that made people angry and it's understandable because people now had to do it.

I waited almost seven months just to see who died. The backlash the show received was so strong it was honestly shocking. However, it turned out to be a breaking point for many viewers and this is the first big moment that became the final straw for a large portion of the show. fandom that abandoned the show right then and there and then came season 7. Many consider the first episode of season 7 to be one of the best episodes of the show, if not the best episode, which obviously, after all the backlash violent season 6 finale throughout their entire hiatus, they knew this premiere had to be a Banger and as promised, we ended up finding out in this premiere who killed Negan, Abraham and Glenn.

By the way, the episode is exciting, brutal and emotional, it makes Negan even scarier than he was in the season 6 finale and honestly, aside from some criticism about how graphic this episode was, the season premiere 7 was so good and so many people talked about it, some people were convinced that the show would manage to regain the trust of the fans and these people were wrong. I'm going to make this short season 7 and 8 ruin the show plain and simple after the first episode of season 7. The show just fails in terms of quality, it's an absolute free fall that I don't understand today, it's almost hard to believe the tailspin that the program continues during this time.

I still have trouble believing it's real even though I watched it all basically to give you a brief descriptiongeneral. Seasons 7 and 8 are just 31 episodes of boomerang storytelling where nothing happens. all about the war against Negan, which should have been the craziest story of the entire show, especially after that crazy setup, but it's so boring that it's an endless back and forth of useless, filler episodes that go on and on and on and the program. it just never gets to the point, it seemed like the writer's plan with the story just became: how do we waste as much time as possible to keep dragging this out so we can squeeze more seasons out of the show?

It's not interesting, it's boring, because it feels cramped, strange. like hell and in the process of ruining the story they also ruin all the characters one by one. Negan receives one of the most badass introductions in television history, but even though Jeffrey Dean Morgan never gave a bad performance in this role, the character ends. He ends up becoming an annoying villain who feels boring and poorly handled because he never gets to the point I'm Naked and I've Ate Spaghetti Rick has no direction as a character now Daryl Hoop is by far the most popular character on the show. a background character who almost never speaks, he literally spent two seasons growling at people and barely says anything and it's not just me saying that because of the way Norman Reedus himself recognized him afterwards and for the last two seasons Daryl has been speaking in a series of Growls and Snarls in this episode.

No, you're right, basically over the last few seasons, the show had become a repetitive drag that kept taking a couple of big stories and recycling them over and over again. and seasons seven and eight were the worst, it was a disaster, these two seasons are just embarrassing, they are so bad it's almost an insult and it was enough for the audience because season 7 is the point where The Walking Dead started to lose viewers for the first time and it was noticeable because they were losing viewers rapidly, the ratings were dropping at an alarming rate and that continued throughout the eighth season, the online rhyme fan communities simply diminished, some of them got very angry and started to rant about the show every week. until they stopped covering it, it was really sad that the show that at one point easily had 13-17 million live viewers each week, which by the way was just gigantic, was now dropping below the 10 million line regularly and that fall showed no sign of stopping and never stopped because of the way the show never recovered from seasons seven and eight, especially after they made their third and final fatal mistake because in the midseason finale of season eight season the writers randomly decided to kill off Carl Grimes.

Rick's son, oh no, there was a lot of drama behind the scenes because supposedly Chandler Riggs, who played Carl, was told that he would be on the show for a long time and that he was planning many things in your life. go okay with that and then they just randomly killed him very quickly after he renewed his contract, but before people knew about it there was already outrage everywhere, okay no, after 23 episodes of complete boredom and mediocrity, Carl's death arises. nowhere and in a way that feels incredibly unearned and was just the final breaking point for the show.

Carl's death turned out to be the last straw for many people. Everyone was so fed up with The Walking Dead's Scott Gimple that he became synonymous with the show's downfall. everyone accepted that the show's glory days had passed, so fans abandoned the show by the millions, it literally got to the point where the cast of the show was sent on a full press tour at the beginning of season 9 to, literally begging people not to give Season 9 of the show also saw Scott Gimple step down as showrunner to handle bigger projects within the franchise and the series' long-time writer Angela Kang took over. as a new boss after the complete disasters that were the last two seasons of AMC and literally.

Everyone involved in the show knew a change was needed and Angela was determined to return the show to its former glory and you know, Against All Odds, it happened. Angela Kang actually fixed the show. Season 9 is one of the best seasons of The Walking Dead it's one of the best returns to form I've ever seen on TV and Angela takes 100% of the credit for that and she had to work hard to make it this good who had to deal with the consequences. of the worst two seasons and also had to deal with Andrew Lincoln's departure from the show, we'll talk more about his departure in a moment, but his departure meant that Angela was now tasked with reinventing the show without her leading man, it should have been a loss. battle from the beginning but somehow he managed to do it, he made The Walking Dead great again but it didn't matter, the show actually got better yes but it was too little too late even though the remaining fans and critics They were back on the side of the program. and praising it again Walking Dead spent the entire season 9 bleeding viewers left and right despite the great return to form, they just couldn't get the show to recover from the major mistakes of the last three seasons, each week saw new low ratings for it ran until its eventual end and continued in subsequent seasons, people just abandoned the show in droves and for the record, I was also one of those people even though I loved season 9 and was left very impressed by how Angela King reinvented the show Somehow I couldn't find the motivation to watch season 10.

I started the season when it came out, but two episodes in, I'm literally the second week, something in my brain just went away. I'm tired of this and never went back to the program. I officially quit The Walking Dead. Two episodes into season 10. And I think it's because, yes, like I said, it was too little, too late, but also because the sense of community around the show was completely gone. At this point, it was true for the fandom as a whole and it was also true for me individually. At the beginning of the video I mentioned how my people and I used to watch the show in massive groups and we would have a viewing party every week with friends and family members around good food and then whoever couldn't make it would call after the episode and we would all talk about it. that and stuff and it was a hype that felt amazing and fun, but when season 10 came around, I was the only person in my entire extended circle who was still watching the show and that's not too much to believe.

By the way, when I tell you I was the only one, I mean I didn't know a single person who was still watching the show the entire time. my friends had stopped watching my friend's friends stopped watching my girlfriend had come to hate the show my brother abandoned when Carl died in season eight and that was her favorite show of all time, so you can imagine that it didn't Not a single soul was left in my life continuing to watch the show and watching it alone just wasn't the same, so the combination of all these elements caused me to become bored with the show in a way that made it unwatchable for me and not I think I was the only one in that boat because the Walking Dead's rapid decline never slowed down, remember when I said that at its peak The Walking Dead could draw up to 17 million live viewers, yeah well for season 11, the show only attracted about 1 million viewers per episode.

Oh man, I don't know if you realize how crazy that is, isn't that a small drop that you can't ignore by season 11, the show had lost about 94 of its audience, a lot of 94, that's just brutal, there's no way that you can see it. that and wow, oh, okay, no, that's catastrophic when I told you the show took a

historic

decline. I wasn't exaggerating the end of the series, the end of this 12-year journey that meant so much to so many people, it only attracted about 2 million viewers and to this day, almost six months after the end, some old fans of the show aren't even aware that Walking Dead ended last year and, oh, speaking of the devil, let's talk about the reason I made this video, let's talk about the ending.

I hate the ending of The Walking Dead. I can't stand watching it, it made me feel so frustrated and sad at the same time. Now I will reiterate that yes, I stopped watching the show two episodes into season 10 and never finished that season and never watched the. first half of season 11. Although from what I've seen online, the general consensus is that season 10 starts off very strong and gets very boring, especially with a handful of episodes that were filmed during covid and were not planned initially, so make of that what you will. I'm finally going back to the show to watch the final four episodes and the ending left me incredibly irritated, but why is the ending of The Walking Dead so frustrating?

Why is it so bad after all? It is not such an apparently insulting and spiritual ending. -devastating like other shows, it's not the end of Game of Thrones or Pretty Little Liars How I Met Your Mother Dexter or even The Sopranos, but while it's easy to understand why the endings of these shows created such a shit storm massive in pop culture, I think the ending of The Walking Dead is a failure for a reason that is very different from all the others, at least for me, because surely the ending itself as an episode is not as bad as all the others I just mentioned, if anything, is just very disappointing, but somehow I found it much more frustrating and the reason is very simple.

The ending of The Walking Dead is not a real ending. The program ends, yes, but the story does not. The ending of The Walking Dead is not a true swan. The song is a jumping pad used to expand the franchise in AMC's continued desperate attempts to create its Walking Dead Universe. The characters we love and appreciate don't actually complete arcs that come full circle or allow them to find closure, no, no. has just been sent to different spin-off series in different parts of the world. Daryl Dixon, who essentially became the lead after Rick left, will somehow find himself in Paris in a new show of his own that is currently filming.

Maggie and Negan are apparently getting a spin-off titled The Walking Dead Dead City, that's a terrible title by the way, it will be set in New York and there are three or four other series in the works. Rick Grimes returns in the finale for the first time since his departure. at the beginning of season 9, but he won't actually return for the finale, it's just a teaser for his spin-off with Michonne coming out at the end of next year and even that is an example of how shady and disrespectful to the audience he can be. AMC. In case you don't know, from the brief backstory, Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick Grimes, wanted to leave the show at the end of season 8.

He wasn't enjoying it as much, which is understandable because seasons 7 and 8 were a very low point for the show, his contract ended at the end of season 8 and he also grew tired of living so far from his wife and children. The show was filmed in Georgia, but Andrew Lincoln is British and his family lived in England, so at the end of season 8. he was going to leave, there was a whole setup for his exit with the now infamous Flash Forward from the beginning of the season 8 which shows Rick appearing to die next to a tree, which was confirmed by Andrew Lincoln himself as a montage for Rick's ending. story because he initially asked the writers to kill him off, except AMC somehow convinced him to stay for another 5 episodes in season 9 so they could give him a proper send-off, so Flash Forward was later retconned and turned out to be something like this . a farce and now the end of Rick's story was the main focus of the first part of the following season.

It's important to know that the entire marketing campaign for season 9 was about Rick's final episodes, they only talked about that in the trailers. on the posters, Andrew Lincoln did a lot of events and interviews, saying goodbye to fans and talking about how much this character and this show meant to him and people were very sad to see him go, including this was a big deal, I mean . From day one, The Walking Dead had been Rick Grimes' story, so people were sad to know that the story would pass beyond him, but they were still curious to see how things would end for him, especially after all the public farewells they had seen.

From Andrew and AMC it was hard to take, but everyone accepted it and was ready to say goodbye, but then their final episode came out and Rick's exit turned out to be another strange, fake death that ended with a cliffhanger that left everyone really confused. only for Scott Gimple to immediately announce on Talking Dead after the show that this was all essentially another big stunt, this wasn't the big sendoff we'd been conditioned to accept, Rick wasn't actually leaving toalways, they were just sending him off to a trilogy of Rick Grimes spin-off movies and the first five episodes of season 9 were essentially a setup for that announcement.

This revelation was met with a lot of frustration and lack of emotion that took Scott Gimple and AMC a bit by surprise. There were too many times that the people behind the program had misled the public in a very unpleasant way. They tried to generate some publicity for the Rick Grimes movies, but they never got the excitement they were looking for. I think this could have caused it. They panicked a bit behind the scenes because then those strange Grimes movies were stuck in development hell for about four years, a period only made worse by the pandemic.

They never really knew what they wanted those movies to be, which was very evident when interviews with Scott or creator Robert Kirkman raised questions about the project when asked about updates to Rick's movies years after their announcement, they still seemed being in the early stages of the process with no signs of a start of production and they always gave very vague information and confusing answers that brought nothing concrete to the table. Simply put, the movies never took off for the four years following his announcement. Four years later these films were scrapped and reworked into a Rick and Michonne television spin-off that is now scheduled. is coming out in 2024 and that's the only reason Rick and Michonne reappear in the series finale of the original show to have nothing to do with the end of the story because it doesn't end, but just to remind the audience that their spin-off is on the way and that's what frustrates me so much.

The ending of The Walking Dead is not an ending, it's just a transition point, it's a scam, it makes you feel like the show cheated on you for 12 years. People invested a lot in this program. The Walking Dead had a very loyal audience, but Scott Gimple and AMC always chose to take advantage of that with little to no shame. They never tried to do anything for the audience, they just tried to manipulate or trick them into seeing more. They are so desperate to do this. franchise is something that they are ready to do anything to achieve and it's really unfortunate to see and it's not like it's really been working either.

AMC has been trying to get a Walking Dead universe off the ground for the better part of a decade and has never really done it. it worked for them fear The Walking Dead, the first spin-off the show had, is the most successful venture the franchise has ever had, aside from the original show, it's about to end with its seventh season, I think, and everything I hear about him is negative. It seems like people haven't liked this show in a long time and people who watch it seem to be just as upset with it as they were with the original show in seasons 7 and 8.

Personally, I abandoned Fear The Walking Dead halfway through. during its second season so I'm not really worried here, but I don't know anyone who watches this show anymore and maybe that's why it's ending, then there's The Walking Dead World Beyond, a teen drama that tackles the zombie apocalypse that It was really really bad, no one really watched it, it ended after two seasons and the only relevant moments it had were a scene that vaguely mentioned Rick Grimes and the post-credits scene at the end of the series that sparks a theory that the apocalypse could have started in France and also shows the possibility of more variants of zombies that are more aggressive and can run and hit, which is something that will probably be developed in some way in the Daryl show because it takes place in Paris, but in Overall, World Beyond was an incredibly forgettable show. which never really found an audience, disappeared as quickly as it came and finally last year we had Walking Dead Tales and spin-off anthology series that came and went so quickly that most people don't realize this show exists.

It was a disappointing mess that didn't really know what to do with its vast realm of possibilities. It went unnoticed and the few people. Whoever watched it didn't like it very much and I think this show especially is a great insight into the state of the franchise right now for what feels like an entire decade. The Walking Dead franchise has been in this perpetual state of throwing everything away. they stare at the wall while desperately waiting for something to stick, and unfortunately for them, none of it has worked out the way they want it to. I mean, excuse the bullshit pun, but The Walking Dead has been in a state of decline for about five or six years. actually, I don't apologize for that pun, I stand by it and it seems like AMC is trying to return the franchise to its 2015 glory, but that's over now, the fact that they're ready to screw it up. all of their iconic characters in order to take advantage of this franchise with no end in sight is really sad.

I'm sure I'll be curious and watch the Daryl show and the Rick and Michonne show. I don't know if I'm going to continue with them, but right now I don't see any enthusiasm for any of those spin-offs and some of them are coming out this year, that's a little crazy when you think about it. I don't know, it feels very disappointing. Investing over a decade into a show that never wanted to end only to then entice the small number of people who remain loyal to the show to watch other things if they want a definitive ending that isn't even guaranteed.

I really wanted the final season and to prove me wrong for leaving the show in season 10 to prove to everyone who left the show along the way that moving on would have been worth it, but I feel like it accomplished the opposite, it proved that everyone they were right, it proved it to me and the 94 of Colossal's audience who gave up being so interested in this story and these characters aren't worth it. I've talked about it at length on the channel, but I'm always wary of stories that make it very clear that they don't have The end is in sight and that's what The Walking Dead is now, it's a story that continues just because and most of Sometimes these stories continue until no one wants to watch them anymore and then it ends in a flop that by default can't satisfy anyone and is a sad fate for a show that was once a cultural phenomenon on a scale we've never seen before.

In a meta way, you could say that the franchise itself is the real Walking Dead, okay, that's how it was. Not my best joke, but subscribe, there are almost 500,000 of us here. Look, I don't know what The Walking Dead will evolve into. I really don't know, but I doubt this franchise will ever become the popular cinematic universe the creators desperately wanted. I think it sailed at least seven or eight years ago. At the end of the day, it's a show that was ruined by the greed of the people who turned it into people who chose a corporate route of relying on endless buildup to milk this franchise for everything it has, turned it into this long story and overly drawn out that it feels like it's constantly building towards something that never happens.

I will always remember the first seasons fondly, not just for what they were. but in all the moments it brought me, my friends and my family, as we all experienced it together, but every time I watch it, like many people, I can't help but see what The Walking Dead really is, the biggest downfall in disgrace. in the history of television excuse me