The Walking Dead: Dead City
 

Is anyone watching? Season 2 is almost out.

I dropped TWD some years back out of increasing apathy. And then, on Netflix, I recently watched the show that was originally supposed to be a movie with Rick and Michone - it was fine. It wrapped up their story.

So I thought I'd try the Dead City show, Season 1 also on Netflix. Made it through one episode where Maggie finds Negan at a bar somewhere, and I realized that I'm so far behind on TWD now that I still don't care and gave up after I think an episode or two.

All of the newer spinoffs have been more entertaining than the final 2 or so seasons of TWD.

I guess that's fair, though you're not missing too much. Maggie herself vanished from TWD for years (the actress left to be on that show that was cancelled) and Negan hadn't really done much since the Whisperers story arc.

So despite the fact that Negan killed her husband by literally bashing his brains out as she watched..... I wonder how long it will take for both of them to start banging in this new series.

So when are they going to adapt Rick Grimes 2000?

Exactly.... basically now a daytime soap opera. Walking Dead x Days of Our Lives?

Do we really need or even want Negan "redeemed"?

Honestly, I hope they do that. If only for the controversy.

Which was a shame. The final couple arcs of the comic were great. They didn’t have the balls to do the real ending with Sebastian.

They could still adapt that final issue 20 years in the future, in some format, with Judith instead of Carl. What an incredible ending.

So since most of us here never read or will read the comics, how did it end?

The son of that mayor lady in the Commonwealth shoots Rick dead, then Carl finds his dad as a Walker and shoots him. Then it fast forwards 10 years or so and Carl is a drizzled adult and zombies are mostly just a nuisance put into carnivals and such.

Sort of a lame non-ending. And Kirkman has said when he finishes colonizing all of the issues and reaches the end, he might just keep going with new issues.

Honestly, I think the Walking Dead started out with good "creative intentions" for content, but as time has gone on they saw a tremendous pullback in interest whereby Kirkman didn't know what to do and plugged the original book irrationally and immediately before the ship went down.

And you know, maybe that was the best call he could have made? The thing is that the Walking Dead was strong enough that it's sort of become an entertainment institution. And because of that we have the prevailing "feeling" that the shows and comics do incredibly well. We have that feeling from a lot of people who don't watch the Walking Dead anymore.

I thought it was great.

The penultimate issue was the finale of the Commonwealth arc. The “revolution” was pretty weak and the Survivors win easily. But that’s where the shock is. Once Rick and the group take over and establish their just form of government, that little prick Sebastian shoots him in his sleep.

I thought Rick being the victim of a political assassination was a really interesting end for him. And it was a HUGE moment for Carl facing Sebastian and not killing him because he knew what Rick would have wanted.

(The show pussied out and should have had Sebastian kill Daryl or Aaron, since Rick was gone.)

The final issue is more like 20 years in the future, and the bulk of Carl’s story isn’t incredibly interesting, but not terrible. And man, that final scene when Carl finally makes it home to his daughter, god damn I get choked up when I talk about it.

The story ends with Carl reading his 6 year old daughter (named after Andrea) a published bedtime story about Rick that immortalizes him as a hero who defied all odds to find his family and protect them, making as many friends as possible along the way and always standing up to bad people. He’s essentially regarded as the founding father of their modern society. Carl tells her Rick from the story is her grandfather and she would have loved him.

My summary doesn’t do it justice, the scene plays out beautifully and I thought it was an amazing ending

You got way more out of it than I did. I was excited to read the finale, did so, then kinda went "huh, that's it?" and didn't really think about it again until this post.

Most of my disappointment is to there not being a coherent "ending," not just an ending to the Commonwealth story arc. On the show there was a clear hinting of a religious element at play (the way they're saved inexplicably from that typhoon or whatever it was), I thought that would be a clue for an eventual payoff. Whether that's everyone is "saved" and whisked away to "Heaven" or now, when "God" is sufficiently pleased that the n'er do wells have sorted themselves out and are no longer out there, the dead stop rising and the living are wholly left to rebuild. Or remove the religious component and just suggest a vague supernatural power doing the same thing and you can get the same result.

What Kirkman suggested instead was, "Well, how about nothing?" And I suspect that is due in no small part to him wanting to leave himself a Peter Laird way out if one day he wanted to continue with more zombies after the end of the comics (particularly if any of this hypothetical new material gets adapted into new Walking Dead TV shows, then more $$$).

Interesting point about the show. My brain was on cruise control watching the last couple seasons, so I forgot about that.

This conversation caused me to reread 190-193. The ending of the Commonwealth arc was even more anticlimactic than I remembered haha. But I still love how Rick died a martyr and Carl’s reaction. Also incredibly poetic how the last page is Carl telling Michonne with tears in his eyes that he can’t go on without his father, the bam! Next issue is 20 years later and Carl is a husband and father with a career and nice little property.

That last issue was even better than I remembered. Loved how they showed that Hershel grew up to be a little sh*t and ultimately was jealous of Carl because he grew up entirely fatherless and Glenn was mostly forgotten in the history books.

And those last few pages still kill me. Everything Rick went through being reframed for kids as a heroic story of bravery, friendship and love for generations to come was so good.

The only real connection between any of the endings, be it shows or comics, is that it seems that in Kirkman's world the zombie situation is the new ongoing normal for Earth.

There is no explanation. There is no known catalyst. There is no fixing it. This is it - zombies and the infection are part of it.

Which makes it no different than the George Romero original Dead universe of films, of which Walking Dead already owes pretty much everything to. Though, I thought Walking Dead would diverge from that and offer something in the way of a happy ending. Of all the options available to Kirkman, the ending he chose is easily the most chickensh** one there is. His route required no risk of polarizing his audience, no risk of upsetting anyone, anywhere, or taking any sort of creative stand that would impede any fan's head canon. It's the Seinfeld of comic book endings.

Yeah.

Given all of the "unexpected deaths" in that show, it actually would have been an incredibly satisfying ending to have Rick not only make it, but somehow get more info going back to that CDC episode that would have wound up having him find some kind of "cure".

Saw the first episode of Dead City's second season. I like what's going on with Negan, but that's a really, really flimsy reason for Maggie going back to New York. And why shouldn't she like immediately have headed back to Alexandria or Hilltop or the Commonwealth after season 1?

I think I'm probably the only one here watching this show but I will say... after a few episodes, season 3 of Dead City is actually pretty good. The rubbishing of everything left over from season 1 and 2 right away really helped, and the slow creation of this season's main bad guy is effective.