The Walking Dead…An Unsatisfying End

Well, it’s over…’til October. AMC’s The Walking Dead has become quite the hit show.  Who would have thought that a show about zombies and human survivors on the run would catch on with so many people.  But the show has “legs” and will be on the air until…well, until AMC or the show’s creators pull the plug.

This season was probably the most anticipated season for fans of the show. If you are (or were) one of the folks who is reading (or read) the graphic novel/comics, you know that the character of The Governor is one of the most hated (and, for some, loved) in the series.  The TV show and the graphic novel/comic depart from each other in many ways, and even when The Governor was introduced on the TV show, he wasn’t pure evil like he was in the comic book.  Instead, actor David Morrissey plays him in a more charismatic way – with a charm offensive first, and then once the layers come off, as an almost nihilist psychopath. You can see the contrast between the two Governor characters below.

Kudos to David Morrissey for the way he portrayed The Governor this season.  He brought a lot a of subtly to a role that essentially called for him to be power-hungry and insane.  They set him up as an example of what happens when you become a dictator — something Rick was dealing with, too.  But where The Governor was kinda sorta able to recreate the world before the zombie apocalypse in his gated community of Woodbury, Rick struggled in his own gated community in the prison under a similar political structure (“Ricktatorship”).  Part of that struggle was Rick going off the rails after the death of his wife and him wandering around the outskirts of the prison being, as Glen put it, “The mayor of Crazy Town.”  So, in a way, the grand arc of the show was to show why a dictatorship is not good for the human survivors — and how Rick eventually learned that lesson.

However…

All the episodes were leading up to a big fight between The Governor and Rick, but that didn’t happen — and yes, I was disappointed.  I felt like the show’s creators strung us (the viewers) along for episode after episode only to shift away from the big showdown toward a more open-ended conclusion.  Also, it may be a bad analogy, but there was a kind of “Darth Vader gets away” element to The Governor.  After he slaughtered his Woodbury “army” for not following him unconditionally, his getaway from the scene of the slaughter with Martinez and…that other guy… left me wondering “Well, he can’t go back to Woodbury, so where are they going?” I suppose The Governor will be back in the next season, but in what manner? He only has a couple of people with him and few guns.  But if they do go back to Woodbury and regroup, I hope next season isn’t “The Walking Dead:  The Governor Strikes Back.”