'The Walking Dead' Finale: The Best, the Worst, the Wolves
You could call the fifth-season finale of The Walking Dead “The Justification and Revenge of Rick Grimes.” After the previous week’s episode, which found the Sheriff looking a little crazed with bloodlust and babble (“You still don’t get it! We know what needs to be done; we do it!”), the 90-minute finale gave context and closure to that side of Rick.
Warning: Spoilers for the season finale of The Walking Dead follow.
The best moments of the finale were, as has been true since this series began, the tough action scenes: Carol holding a knife to the throat of wife-beater Pete; Aaron telling Daryl that, even though the car they’re in is surrounded by zombies, they’ll fight their way out together; Morgan taking out two armed members of the Wolves tribe with just his whatever-you-call-it ninja stick and serene killer moves.
Most boring characters this season: bad-Elvis-as-idiot-savant Eugene, and the weak-willed, erratically motivated Father Gabriel. (I love Seth Gilliam, he’s done a good job portraying this wishy-washy goofball, but the character is still just a wishy-washy goofball — he gives Episcopalians a bad name.)
Related: ‘Walking Dead’ Season Finale Recap: Reunited And It Feels So Ominous
Best new character: Deanna, whose idealistic humanism was well-embodied by Tovah Feldshuh. In a show that has frequently tried and failed to make the argument for non-violence as a workable philosophy in a world gone crazily amoral, she mounted the best defense of that point of view. Plus, come on — she said, “Do it,” giving the OK to Rick to snuff the insufferable Pete.
Best ongoing character: Carol, whose ever-increasing canniness made her a regularly surprising yet convincing hardboiled realist.
The Walking Dead has taken a few wayward strolls this season — most recently its very atypical decision to Tackle an Important Social Theme and raise the subject of domestic abuse — and as always, whenever the show strays too far from its reason for existence (you know: killin’ zombies), it invariably exposes itself as a shallow-minded venture. Dead really, after five seasons, has never had anything original to say about humanity and the threat of extinction. Its value resides almost solely in its effectiveness as a thrill machine.
If you wanted to see The Walking Dead off a major character, I guess you may have been disappointed. But the finale did a good job of setting up more thrills to come. The Wolves seem promising as enemies who aren’t going to talk us to death the way, say, the Governor did. And if killing Pete cleared a path for Rick to make his affection more clear to now-relieved-widow Jessie, I’d say The Walking Dead might be ready to mingle more sex in with its violence.
And as long as I raised that subject, can I put in a vote for Carol and Morgan to become the show’s new killer couple?