Michael James Shaw as Mercer, Khary Payton as Ezekiel - The Walking Dead _ Season 11, Episode 24 - Photo Credit: Jace Downs/AMC
The final episode of The Walking Dead showcased emotion, action, and suspense with a satisfying conclusion that wrapped up a number of characters stories.
Rosita’s death was something I did not see coming. I thought that her scenes with Eugene and everyone that said goodbye to her was beautifully acted as it really brought out the sadness in me. The character will be missed and Coco will have to grow up without her birth mom.
Pamela being arrested for her crimes during the last few episodes was expected. I really love the standoff between her, Mercer’s commonwealth army, and Daryl including when Daryl mouthed the “we are NOT The Walking Dead” line as the context here suited better than the line from the source material.
I will say that it was cool to see those variant walkers being a threat to everyone. I just wish that we got this much earlier. I also love the callbacks to when Shane made sure that Rick Grimes was safe in the hospital as Daryl did the same for Judith Grimes. I do question where she got that strength from to close the doors from those walkers while she had a gunshot wound though!
The final scene between Daryl and Carol is the best scene the two characters had. It is a shame that we will not see Carol in Daryl’s spinoff since this scene really felt like that is where it was heading. Also, Maggie and Negan’s conversation was sad. Sure, Negan finally apologized to her. But I am glad that Maggie did not forgive him. Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have a great chemistry when the two actors are on screen together!
There are a few nitpicks that I have to point out. First, Rosita got bit and 24 hours later, she is at dinner with the rest of the family as she did not appear to look or act sick at all. We saw this with every character that got bit that looked sick minutes to hours later. How could this oversight happen? Second, while it was cool to see how everyone paired up to take down those walkers, it looked very cheap on the visual effects side.
With that said, The Walking Dead’s series finale did what the Game of Thrones series finale should have done. That is, end the show with a coherent story. This is a great final episode. Even the Rick Grimes and Michonne scenes at the end gave us a small bite of what we can expect from their spinoff.