I’m a little surprised by the confusion surrounding the format of this episode; wasn’t it fairly obvious?  Maybe it was the time that has elapsed since the somewhat disappointing fifth season finale.  But this was a welcome change of pace, skipping over the immediate fallout of the “meeting” regarding Rick’s fate in Alexandria and jumping to the biggest test of his leadership skills to date.  Seeing the moments that mattered in the meantime via flashback was an elegant way to provide context and action at the same time.  

The arrival of the herd was one of the story elements I’d been waiting to see ever since the introduction of Alexandria, and using it as the basis for the start of the season is a great idea.  The mechanism for getting the story to that point was different than the source material, but this was better: Rick’s hubris is going to result in some harrowing moments in the next couple episodes.  And if they adhere to the events from the source material closely, then the audience is in for some shock and psychological scarring.


One of the best elements of The Walking Dead is its set of characters, and Rick has never been this complicated.  On the one hand, he has the kind of vision that it will take to keep Alexandria from becoming a failed experiment, if he can just rally them together and train them into survivors.  On the other hand, his choices can be ruthless and reckless, and the parallels to the Governor have never been more clear.  It makes sense that he would have folks questioning his choices, and when Morgan is among your most vocal critics, you might want to take a step back and reconsider your choices.  

What Rick needs to do is trust his “family” more, so that it’s less about him and his apparent desire for control and more about everyone staying alive.  Glenn is turning out to be one hell of a leader himself, as we see with Nicholas; Glenn’s taking someone who was an utter coward and giving him the chance to redeem himself.  Given the chance, Carol, Michonne, and Daryl have great instincts and would at least be able to help approach the more tentative among the residents in different ways.


But leaders often emerge in crisis, and the current problem is a huge one.  The show has never gone this big, and the palpable sense of impending disaster is constant throughout the extended runtime.  And with good reason: even if 99% of the herd is successfully repelled, that remaining 1% would still be hundreds of Walkers.  And given how weaker points of the wall were straining against relatively incidental impacts, the prospects of a much larger number coming towards Alexandria is terrifying.  (Perhaps more so, the possibility that the Wolves might have intentionally blown that horn to use the herd as retaliation.)





One of the best things about this premiere is that the extended run time (90 minutes with commercials) didn’t feel like the usual slog.  The extended fifth season finale could have been half that, and still would have felt stretched out.  This episode had precious little filler, and even the moments that felt tacked on where either revealed to be important later in the episode or likely setup for the near future.  And since it was an episode with tons of character exploration alongside the tense Walker action, this episode proves that The Walking Dead is still more than capable of delivering serious intensity.