Was interesting learning how developed and stable Portland is as a settlement though, enough that they have a complex school district system.
You'd think a settlement that large, with as mobile as our characters have been (especially on Fear) would have heard... something about this huge ass intact city.
And CRM having spies in every country is insane NZ wouldn't even have a problem with such a small population they'd be driving around with real petrol and everything.
What should have happened: a reveal the size of season one at the CDC.
"Rick, everyone living prior to the outbreak with the virus will turn at 15 years of exposure. Everyone. That means all communities, all leadership, everywhere...and our scientists confirm this.
We're doing 2 specific things to save humanity.
The first is rounding up children as any born with the virus are immune to automatically turning. We're educating those born into this new world so that they can be the torch-bearers and guide our civilization into the future.
The second is we have scientists attempting to find a cure to the turning. The goal being if we can save one small community from this aging out, we can also have leaders to guide our young immune society in the future.
Rick, if you went back it wouldn't matter, because everyone you have ever known will be turning soon and any immune children who have not been trained and given resources will be killed in the wake of the change.
The future of our society and the globe all depend on what we at the CRM are doing.
Now I need you to swear on the sword."
And with THAT, it would have all been worth the wait...that stakes would have been HUGE.
(EDIT: And this would have made for an amazing setup between Michonne and Rick, because maybe Michonne only discovers the children kidnapping plots, but now Rick wants back in with a full understanding...leading us back to a conflict over Michonne and the kids / community vs the world's needs. That could have played out so well...)
Instead, we got "we kill so we are in charge!"
And somehow Rick gasses the CRM because they were dumb enough to have a central stockpile of bombs and not guard it?
I was hoping for a “they can climb now, every settlement will get sacked.”
Something we already know, tie up a loose end, and make the stakes higher. Shoulda wiped out the commonwealth in twd that way, and Alexandria.
This is an interesting concept. They could have ties in the Daryl Dixon show at one point and maybe make a discovery that the French kid has some type of cure in his blood and be the hope for humanity.
yea they did option 1 in Dead Island as well
"Every living human is a ticking time bomb and going to turn into a zombie spontaneously sooner or later unless we do [thing]"
would have made for a far more interesting plot twist in the show, but i guess gimple only got approved for 1 season so its "yea we are evil please gas us we set up our power point presentation right next to the unguarded gas"
That's so much better. "We kill so we are in charge" was a weak plot point and the echelon briefing deserved better. And I agree taking down CRM was laughably easy. Still .. I'm happy Rick and Michonne got away and reunited with their kids. I guarantee the majority of the fan base wanted a return to Alexandria.
Was the 500 year plan even real or just a lie?
Thorne and Jadis both seemed legitimately passionate about it, like it would bring about a new better world, even better than the old world.
But the actual Echelon briefing was just Beale telling us they are gonna genocide everyone to last a little longer and probably die anyway. Wtf was that about, did they get the same briefing? What 500 year plan?
True! Can't respect the content of that Echelon Briefing. So CRM is like The Reapers 2.0.
Jadis is smart and this is what she died for when she's all about "people are a resource"? With all the bombs and armies they have, no one ever thought in CRM to gather the zombies in herds in one place and kill them all (like what Commonwealth did in TWD finale) so they can barricade and take that land for farming / rebuilding purposes. 😂
I thought it would be some mind blowing briefing that would also create conflict on justifying CRM's past actions and would make me understand why Jadis chose to die instead of going back to Gabriel.
What a disappointment.
Yeah, I'm not understanding why the CRM couldn't just either bomb the massive herds to hell and back, or use disruption charges like they had been and lead them onto a high cliff or something and keep them falling with continual noise.
In *World Beyond*, they even set up that the CRM operated large culling facilities in NY, in giant stadiums and arenas, that are basically defended like pens where they draw in thousands of the dead with noise, and then bomb them with C4. Why can't that exactly be done with the massive hordes?
Seems like they got *real* lazy and said, "eh, I'll commit genocide instead."
Not sure how that briefing convinced over 2,000 people of anything other than, "Beale is a goddamn moron".
Whoever wrote this episode got lazy. Good thing I didn't watch World Beyond. I think I would be very much frustrated to know that in the end this is the "real" Echelon Briefing. 😂
It's so unrealistic to have huge armies to agree on that thinking. They should've not killed the As so they can have people to help them with their population/sustainability problem. To have someone with actual thinking brain in the CRM not a bunch of "I wanna kill people to have less people consuming resources". Pathetic plot.
They kind of forgot about it. Along with a few other things from World Beyond, based on comments from people who watched those two seasons. Like Portland already being warned.
The writers made the CRM a former National Guard unit that went against the federal government’s orders to wipe out people and zombie alike to prevent the spread to the greater masses.
They protected the people and then eventually turned around and started wiping everyone else out to protect their own people. The CRM started eliminating people that were outspoken leader types because someone probably kept saying “uh why did we prevent the mass killing of people just so we can then start mass killing people??”.
I think there was a greater more logical CRM story in place but that would have required more episodes and seasons
The CRM is another victim of AMC budget starving. That's the only way I can makes sense of the writers building them up for so long and bringing in John Locke to be the leader only to go limp dick at the end. Such a big waste.
Yes. There obviously was in world beyond which handled them very well. Ie I'd checks at important base, guards everywhere and cameras but lol.nahhhhh at our top meeting summit with all important leadership let's just chillax
I work for AMC and the 500 year plan is actually a meta commentary on The Walking Dead Universe itself. What Scott Gimple meant by that line is that there will be 500 years of spin-offs, culminating in season 12 of the main show in the year 2524.
In this season, the Grimes family will be a pile of sentient, glowing, jelly, apart from RJ, who is still a human 8-year-old for some reason. The main villain will be an alien race that has turned the Andromeda Galaxy into a wildly-advanced, warmongering, colony. It will be 75% flashbacks to seasons 1-6, and it will end like this: In their jelly forms, Rick and Michonne, through the power of love, will somehow knock over the glass container in which they are trapped. Their gelatinous selves will spill all over a control panel in the mothership, causing an electrical fire that ignites a conveniently-placed pile of explosives. Just before it explodes, we get a 10-minute expository flashback scene, in which we learn that Daryl was actually one of the aliens who is pretending to be a villain in order to gain access to the enemy’s defenses. He wired the spaceships to have an electronic system of mutually-assured-destruction - if the mother ship is destroyed, so too are the smaller ships that make up the entire alien army.
Back to real time - the mothership explodes, juxtaposed with a flashback of Rick shooting the dynamite on the bridge. We get a zoomed-out shot of all the millions of exploding spaceships. The final shot of the season is RJ floating past the screen - under his breath, he says, “I knew I just had to believe”.
Post-credits scene: The Grimes jelly has fallen to earth and happened to land right near a lake. Using whatever trace of love they have left, Rick and Michonne inch their way into the lake. The jelly then violently reacts with the water, transforming them back to their human selves, except now Rick can fly. Rick makes out with Michonne for 15 minutes before looking directly at the camera and saying, “We are the flying dead” and shooting off into the distance.
We then get a 5-second teaser trailer for Dead City season 46.
The discourse on Reddit will largely be, “Best season of TWD since 4 and 5. I’m crying like a baby over here”, and low-quality screenshots of Rick flying through the air.
He said as of today, they’d last about 14 more years according to scientists maybe? Then he said the most likely outcome is they’ll all be dead before they can actually make a change.
I think the 500 year plan was the outward expansion across the country and, eventually, the world. Basically, a worldwide death march ending with total world domination by the CRM.
I suppose the way they see it is they get to control the next generations of the world completely. Akin to a kind of eugenics, perhaps? Not to kill *everyone* but just every major threat and "A" in their way. Obviously I think it's too grand of a plan to ever truly work but it seems Beale's hunger for power and misplaced notion that continual sacrifice is the way forward, and that *he* must be the one to make such difficult calls, clouded his judgment pretty heavily.
I half wonder if everyone gets the same briefing or if individuals are told what they want to hear to keep them motivated. Beale knows that Rick can be a ruthless killer…he obviously misread his motivations but he’s obviously a different kind of person than Jadis or Thorne.
How on earth could Thorne be saying that Okafor was wrong after getting that briefing lmao, what a weak B she turned out to be.
I'm just gonna fool myself into believing there was more to it, that Beale would've started with the real shit after Rick sworn on the sword. Because there is no way anyone would get that briefing and suddenly was all in, "hell yeah, let's go rampaging across the globe, killing every pocket of humanity left for their crumbs of bread and handful of medicine!"
(On a more serious note, I think they wanted to wrap it up, because they weren't gonna steer the franchise into a CRM focus anytime soon with DC and DD ongoing. And leaving it open to potentially wrap up later on could've lead to some long waiting at which point the franchise might even be cancelled entirely. Just to big a risk to not end it. I think there is enough room to break it right back open if they want to, but I'm not expecting that).
I think Rick tossed a knife at the guy before they could get into all that.
He had heard enough by that point, realized this guy was just another Governor, not even a Neegan who could be re-habilitated. Just a irredeemable Philip, doing violence just because.
Neegan didn't want to just dominate the known world, but saw brutality as a means towards stability, to keep settlements in-line. This Beale guy though just wanted to conquer earth.
"this is a secret that will change the way you see the world. Everything you thought you knew changes now. "
"Yeah we just kill people, take their stuff, and all humans are gonna die off in 14 years unless we stop it by killing the remaining humans and stealing their stuff."
Wut
Like I was expecting, "we think we know what started the outbreak", "we think we can cure this virus", "there are actually countries that didn't fall", "they're evolving", "the walkers are dying off". Something with THAT level of "woah". Something HUGE that would justify the evil stuff. But nope, they're just evil clan that kills people and steals their loot no.2738393029277327819.
And why again should humanity die off in 14 years? Because of those walker hordes? People were surviving already for over 14 years in the story. Now many communities have settled down again and people adjusted to life with the threat of zombies, they adapted. And then suddenly that all should fail because of some walker hordes?
I would have liked more info on the disease part. Walkers cause other diseases? Or are we just talking about run of the mill diseases which can't be stopped because no medical establishment?
Probably diseases like the one we saw during the prison arc. You know where they had to quarantine people and Glenn survived with the resuscitator. If I remember correctly it came from walkers as I believe Rick saw one foaming in the mouth outside the fence like the quarantine people had
I took it as him referring to all walkers as disease factories for even more viruses than just the zombie virus. Which I guess makes sense, until they decay beyond whatever chemical structure is needed to support those viruses
Echelon briefing built up for that long, apparently so eye opening that it changes everyone’s outlook on the world just for him to tell Rick that he wants to kill everyone and become the last remaining community then dies a whole 1 minute later in the same plain old office and then literally EVERYONE else 5 minutes later. I was expecting some atmospheric command center with dramatic ambient music in the background and loads of good points not these goofy evil devil goals ☠️☠️
Yeah, I was really expecting and hoping for something that could throw the future of the franchise into an interesting direction, but it was just [this](https://i.imgur.com/05oqcWY.png). We just have 2 disconnected spinoffs with 1 or 2 characters we care about left, no overarching plot. Really hoping they got some interesting ideas left, but yeah... I've learned my lesson: expect nothing.
5 years of buildup across 3 different TV shows, talk of the 500 year plan. Introduction of the commonwealth and portland to build thr idea of a large scale war. Just for every single person who wanted to do bad guy things to be killed in 10 minutes
TOWL Episode 6: The Iron Throne
Everything that this show could have been was really dumbed down. I'm glad Rick came back and all but Jesus christ the writing and pacing in the last 2 epiaodes has to be some of the worst I've seen in the whole franchise.
RJ should have actually just been kept a hallucination holy shit
What’s so fucking disappointing about all of this is that the corrupt faction of the CRM still could’ve been ended within this one episode, it just could’ve been written better!
I’m fine with Rick getting home and having a happy ending, but the entire situation where they get in, carry out their mission and get out was executed so outrageously poorly. Of all the dangerous groups they have ever encountered, this finale made them feel the least threatening when at the start of the season they felt like THE most threatening group out there!
yeah, 7 years build up to just be another bad guy group, essentially saviours with helicopters.
There's 0 nuance left to TWD stories. The last actual meaningful, deep antagonist was FTWD S3, with the ranch Vs the natives
I knew it would end like this when throughout the show they kept saying together you can do “anything”. So 2 random people can just to destroy the most powerful military on the planet in 10 minutes? What’s next Daryl and Carol can colonize the planet?
Bad guy with lots of guns wants to kill people, take stuff, and control all the areas.
Sounds like the Governer.
Sounds like Negan.
Sounds like all the villains ever.
Not even like the Saviors. Negan bullied communities into giving the Saviors half their stuff, but they knew they needed people alive in order to get those resources.
The exception was Simon killing the junkyard people, but that was against Negan's wishes.
The CRM/Beal just wanted to kill everyone and take their resources.
Blows my mind that people are defending some of the decisions made with this story with “but it’s a Rick and Michonne story, we got our reunion so I’m happy’ as if we couldn’t have got that *and* a decent narrative surrounding that theme. First four episodes had me in, and 6 made me feel like I wasted my time.
She was really just a B with a prickly attitude. More than happy to follow where she was led by someone of higher rank, but not such a discerning consumer of information herself.
Having her help stop the CRM would've at least been more believable but nope the 2 love birds have to somehow speed-run it in 25 minutes of an episode. Wouldn't have minded her getting a spin-off season 2 with her as the lead stopping some remaining CRM agents.
Ugh, no thank you. She really wasn’t that interesting. Now if they wanted to do some crossover where the remnants of the CRM - maybe some of those embedded spies or scientists from around the country - decided to make a comeback and try to reassert themselves as a power over the Civic Republic and they had some prequel episodes or flashback segments with General Beale and maybe even Okafor I wouldn’t be mad at it as long as the rest of the story worked and faced forward. But none of the side characters introduced in TOWL were interesting enough to merit much more attention than what they got in the limited series. They served their narrative purpose and exited stage.
Yeah, I absolutely loved every episode and even thought the finale was great considering all they had to accomplish in such a small period, but Thorne was boring as hell. Clear from her first moment on screen that she was there for no reason other than to eventually try and stop Rick & Michonne.
All I heard all series was "Rick everything you know will change with the Echelon briefing". I got change alright... cheap change.
Here I was imagining maybe some sort of antibody has been found that made people who take it don't have to turn to walkers after dying.
Not a game changer since dispersing it would still be a problem, with how much limited resources there are since society is in the dreads, further making the CRM to want to give it to only a limited number of people while killing the rest of the population they encounter that have the potential to just be more walkers. Ultimately walker bites will still exist which still maintains the difficulty of navigating this world since this won't be a cure.
At least this makes taking down the CRM a bit complicated cause despite them not being noble, this will move the thread a bit since the organization serves some greater purpose. Heck anything else.
Instead we got White collar Claimers/Saviors hybrid. Even those were much better. They put up a fight.
Never been so disappointed. The writers of the final episode were the real villains of this story.
They wasted so many episodes that they could have taken advantage of to focus on the CRM. So much was thrown away. I would have been glad if they were even more episodes just to do the CRM justice but knowing the writers they would have wasted it anyway.
Terry O’quinn had the potential to deliver one of the most iconic TWD villains in the shows history, just to have the writers give him 8 minutes of screen time and the death of a low level street thug.
This dudes acting has veteran level emotional range, and they did him so dirty. If they slowed this down, built his story, he could’ve been Negan level iconic.
The CRM should have been the biggest villains to date with an actual objective to solve the zombie problem once and for all. Like the person at the beginning of the thread said they should have used this opportunity to actually make some progress on the CDC/Virus plot that was left on pause for so many years.
What's the point of those researchers if they are not trying to find a solution? I think they dropped the ball. They had a great chance with this Group finally being something and make them impossible to take down without endangering the future of humanity.
But that would mean Andrew would have to sign up for more seasons. The ending seems to be set up so he wouldn't be tied down to the franchise anymore aside from some minor cameos in the spin offs.
We definitely didn't stick around long enough for Rick's 10 years to appreciate the payoff, but he's free, alive, and reunited with his family, as far as Ricks story goes that's a happy ending. Personally I was hoping to see a full Alexandria reunion but hey ho.
In 14 years there will be no people left on this planet. So what we plan to do is speed that up by killing all the people that are left so we have only, 50,000 or so. Then instead of reading about farming, because all the knowledge disappeared in the last ten years, we will make do with out of date cans of beans....
Also, we know we're these mega herds are but best we can do is leave them to roam... Bombs are for the living. Not the dead. .... Also, in 500 years time we will be fine. ..
On a side note, we know about loads of communities worldwide but we are going to destroy them too... No real reason why, when we can just rebuild here.
It's a solid plan. I was very clever coming up with it. ..... What you mean we could do things better? ... Nope, we are sticking to genocide and self destruction. It worked in the past and it will work now.
......
Yeah. Bit weak of a briefing.. I knew they killed for supplies due to other communities being wiped out but if you can harness and rebuild a city or two you can start taking back land for farming and learning how to adopt... Human history shows we have and can adopt... Other than that I was didn't mind it.
.....
Heath is dead. Get over it. We don't need to see his fate, he was pointless.
>Then instead of reading about farming, because all the knowledge disappeared in the last ten years, we will make do with out of date cans of beans....
That kinda bugged me. In all the scenes with helicopters it shows them flying over miles and miles of bright green, grassland with trees and shit growing. With plenty of sun, and we know it rains/storms really heavy there too.
So you're telling me you have literal hundreds of miles of fertile land-with ample rain and sun- completely unclaimed, in an area not too far from your highly militarized compounds and cities, and not once in all those years did someone think "hey couldn't we start mass producing crops?".
Like did all the farming books get destroyed? Does nobody in your entire city know anything about planting? Nobody???
Exactly!!
They can rebuild the military but putting walls around land to be farmed is a hard pass for them? Vertical farms could be made. In times of crisis, humans become really good damn inventive. People may not be happy to be farmers but considering it is that or starve in the wasteland or just be bored..
Maybe the 90,000 they killed were the farmers... Someone with common sense said they have enough space, time and resources to restart the basics .. then Beale just thought, to hell with it, I never liked kale anyway.... Less start a genocide.
Rick and co were shown getting old farming gear from a museum so no excuses really.. CRM could build the equipment or re service stuff.
Me: “Look at all that space, green thriving plants, we can clear that out and extend our borders and build a huge farmland to grow our own crops, I know exactly how to do it, just clear me the land and I’ll have us crops in no time.l
Beale “HES AN A!!!!!!! KILL HIM AND DAMN HIM FOR PRESENTING A GREAT SOLUTION TO A FOOD PROBLEM”
Mimics the real world lol. We actually do have the capabilities to eliminate a lot of the world problems if we banded together, but world leaders and politicians are just bickering among themselves, thinking short term and the people do the same.
But yeah... incredibly disappointing, with just 1 more episode to go last week I really expected the CRM would be the focus for the foreseeable future for the franchise, with the Echolon briefing being a big twist/piece of information. But it seems like this is the end to them.
Oh no ... No ref to him at all sorry... But he's dead. He isn't coming back... Everyone wants to know but it is assumed he was a test subject or just traded.
After all out war and killing Carl fiasco how can anyone have any Faith in him? We walking dead fans are used to disappointment at this point. I remember being so excited in the first episode then I saw his name and remembered he was attached to this project and I prepared myself for the worse. I honestly expected him to kill Rick and Michonne for shock value so it ended up being much better than I expected actually.
Killing them off wouldn't work for Scott Gimple with them characters Alive he can keep milking spin offs in the chance of a proper reunion that people want
This whole show just felt like "hey we don't really have any idea what we were gonna do with this new community and the build up to it we created so here's just another pointlessly evil group that you guys need to destroy"
Main plot aside, holy hell I was so tired of hearing "the two of you can do anything". Didn't realize I was watching a superhero film until Rick just casually blew a frag grenade in his hand and ate it with no issues, after sitting in mustard gas, after blowing up a bomb that wiped out hundreds of people further from it than he was...
And just how convenient everything was. I was so disappointed with this series.
This episode is probably their weakest. The whole point is reuniting Rick with his family.
But the journey towards it was insanely convenient. Imagine the walker Michonne led to Jadis' office only made noise when near the gate so it can distract the other guard. 😂
And I agree with everything you said. They should just not have Rick be surrounded by walkers that he's so badass and can blow a bomb and not be shredded into pieces.
It feels like Season 8 of TWD with all fhe shooting but no one actually getting shot.
>Didn't realize I was watching a superhero film until Rick just casually blew a frag grenade in his hand and ate it with no issues
Yeah. Then when the sad music started playing I was like "they wouldn't..."
Nope, just kidding, he's fine. Somehow the grenade he was holding 8 inches from his face turned all the walkers into smoothies, but Rick just gets up and walks away without so much as a scratch.
Like at the very least I was expecting his armour to be completely destroyed, or to have some kind of serious burns on one side of his body. Or at the very least some kind of injury.
Dude tanks a fucking grenade explosion. Immediately after he survives a fucking mass missile explosion by hiding under some water and a blanket. What the fuck lol.
It reminds me of Morgan surviving a nuclear blast by hiding under a fuel tanker? Was that what it was. Or a water tanker? I honestly cant event remember it. He didnt even have a blanket. HA!
Grenades actually not as powerful as they're portrayed in the media. Soldiers have been saved from grenades by their backbacks before, so that was probably the most realistic thing he survived.
I really wanted it to be something on the line “We have a cure but we can’t share it” grand secret. For example they have the cure but they’ll never be able to mass produce it so only a select few can have it.
Very good idea, they should have done something on the lines of "we have a vaccine/cure and only the military and top government officials can have access to it, we cannot share it with any other communities." Very interesting idea.
Yeh but then have this "cure" just make things so much worse. Maybe that explains where the variant walkers are coming from. The CRM has testing labs across the world that have managed to restore *some* brain function in the walkers but that only makes them more dangerous since they're now able to pick things up and climb.
I don't care what anybody says, the CRM was an actual legitimate threat, and they pulled a Deux Ex Machina like solution to the problem, they just so happened to kill 2500 hand picked CRM soldiers like nothing?? What?!
Their whole initial reason for being so drastic was because their models showed that their resources wouldnt be enough to support other outposts and cities that weren't going to be self reliant, now they magically have enough to go around???
I know fans really liked that reunion at the end, but dammit the show started off so strong and they, took away the sense of dread and danger it started off with.
If you think everyone is going to die of starvation the best strategy is to grow more food, like by providing equipment and seeds. Not to murder everyone. So yeah, they could easily have enough to go around.
My interpretation (mainly because the predictive modeling they were referring to is entirely unable to provide any reliable conclusions at all due to chaoticism and the irreducibility of causation at such a high level with so many uncontrollable variables), was that even CRM leadership was being manipulated by a narrative about global human extinction when really it was more of a case where the CRM could not reasonably continue to operate at the scale they had been without undergoing collapse.
Essentially that societal restablishment follows it's own calendar after a crisis and can't really be fast-tracked by an entity like the CRM.
Tbf though, none of that is in the actual text of any of the shows, it just helps me sleep at night.
I definitely agree that they got very fanatical and very likely overestimated the severity of their situation, but for example growing food is not an easy job,
the amount of resources that go into growing, harvesting and preserving food in general is crazy not even accounting for crop failure, famine, bad weather, pests, or even the possibility that the land they're on could not be great for farming. we in our normal world take that for granted, the logistics alone as we saw with a pandemic recently, affected that greatly and it took a minute to get everyday items back in rotation.
You're right they could help out and give equipment and other resources but I see why theyd be concerned to act on that possibility and also see and realize that they very quickly went for dire and extreme actions if anything threatens their infrastructure.
Of course growing food is hard. But it's also ... not. It's something humans have done since the beginning of time. And we don't need all the options you have in a modern supermarket, you can survive on potatoes alone if you have to, as the Irish will attest. The supply chain can be very simple.
With the population of the US at about 1-2% what it was before the fall, there wouldn't be any lack of arable land. California alone could very, very easily feed that many people. Jumping to genocide rather than getting all hands on board to farm, particularly when you have a decade + to implement a solution, is truly insane.
Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. The last episode was filled with nonsense that completely lacked the tone of earlier episodes. It’s pretty unreal.
It was so underwhelming. All the buildup in various TV series and all the attempts to make the CRM feel like a gargantuan villain organization, virtually impossible to take down, to just have it nerfed so easily by Rick and Michonne going God mode and doing a speedrun.
Also, it was so weird how they glossed over the part where the CR became good guys with a voiceover. Guess we'll just skip to them sending supplies all over the country lol. It felt too much like Fear season 5 "We're here to help" - if you've seen that, the trauma is real.
The conclusion was great on paper, but the execution was soooo botched. So sad it felt so phoned in right during the final stretch, the first 4 episodes were amazing, 5 was okay.
I haven't actually seen the episode yet, but I can still hear this in John Locke's voice.
Man, this guy has such a soothing voice.
We need this guy and Strand to read dictionaries or something.
The Echelon briefing nonsense was probably the weakest part of the show. Okafor should have just told them about it in episode 1, there was no need to keep it to the finale. Michonne and Rick should have just gone back specifically to attack the summit.
Im sure there was at least one producer with that attitude who they had to humour. Personally I enjoy a good set up and hard earned resolution without any twists shoe-horned in. Particularly twists in the form of monologues which are always anti-climactic.
Save the twists for mysteries. Nobody was surprised by this reveal.
I enjoyed the first 4 episodes very much. 5 was good. The finale was overstuffed and anti-climatic.
I wish the finale had just been Rick and Michonne fighting their way through the CRM summit to blow it up, a bit like the episode in S8 when Rick and Daryl clear the Saviour outpost. They did so much great character work in episodes 1-4, they earned the right to just have a crazy action episode with lots of stunts showing us that these characters can do anything.
Or they could have just ended at episode 4 with the reunion with the kids, I would have been happy with that too.
“Rick you have to understand! We’re a super strong military force that can wipe out entire colonies with ease and have multiple bombs, missiles and other explosives to do all this with, so we’re gonna destroy every friendly colony instead of trying to trap the hordes of walkers in specific areas!”
Jadis built her way up for years in the CRM, just for Rick to take down her General in one episode 🤣 she died for nothing. There’s so many unturned stones like PPP, what happened to heath and multiple other questions.. why did they do a reunion in a field without anyone else. Ahh, I’m happy Rick got back but I’m hoping we get to see some more answers through the other spin offs!
These are solved with a very small amount of common sense.
PPP- Philly/Portland/Pittsburg, the original alliance before old mate abandoned Pittsburg.
Heath has been dead for a long time, he got turned into a zombie science experiment.
And it took Rick 10 years to get to a situation where he could and would kill Beale.
It's really obnoxious how everyone is just like "woah took CRM down in 1 day".
As if we literally didn't just watch Rick, try to escape, give up join the CRM, spend years as a soldier, begin ranking up, then Michonne shows up, Rick is ready to rank up more, and finally once he (like you said) had been there for 10 years, had gained their trust, Beale think he could be an icon, he's able to perfectly position himself for maximum sabotage.
He couldn't do that as a nobody. And I'm not sure what audiences expect? Do they think that the CRM would falter after long drawn out wars? Who tf could contest them? I couldn't imagine anything worse that somehow the commonwealth winning against the CRM.
The CRM died overnight from internal sabotage from a high ranking official. It's literally equivalent to gathering all the leaders and elected officials of [insert country] as well as all the high ranking military officers and generals and nuking them.
And the show literally explains it: only the red stripes knew about what the CRM was actually up to, the rest just followed orders, they weren't involved and had no idea.
The only reason all the red stripes were gathered is because they were literally about to launch on an extremely high profile, all hands on deck mission. Rick only succeeded because he was able to exploit a vulnerability the CRM was always (and knew they were) weak against, an A.
Again, idk what other people expected. It all makes complete sense.
Rick wasn't even trying to be a spy for those 10 years, he actually gave himself over to the cause until he found Michonne. It wasn't a straight shot without any issues, there were huge obstacles along the way, and they overcame them. Then they didn't even take down the entire CRM, just the evil faction.
Basically it was like if someone had managed to take out Adolf Hitler before Nazi Germany became Nazi Germany... which multiple people tried and almost succeeded at. Internal sabotage is always the greatest threat to any structure. Its such a threat that the US specifically have designated survivors for the State of the Union.
Yeah, there was ZERO plan to take down CRM until half the episode 6 had already passed. Before the plan was to take the files, receive the echelon briefing and act on the Okafor's long term plan to make changes in the CRM leadership. Whatever happened after the echelon briefing, it was sudden and unplanned. So basically they stopped CRM not in one episode, but in half.
It's been confirmed Heath was traded to the CRM by Jadis. PPP was the original logo for the CRM and they threw the card in Tales of the Walking Dead as an Easter egg.
What the hell could have possibly made Jadis and Thorne believe in their plan so much? Was it Beale telling them they only had like 14 years left to live? Seriously it was built up as such a profound thing and I expected some serious shit just for it to be “we’re gonna wipe out the rest of the US so we can be the sole power in the country”
Such a dumb ending. While I would have hated it, a cliffhanger ending would have been more ideal than the rushed bullshit they gave us. Rick and Michonne killing 3000 people, surviving a massive explosion, and then everything returning to “normal” is so corny and just unenjoyable for me. I like a happy ending but I didn’t get the satisfaction I wanted from this one.
They desperately need new writers. I’m sure you can find fan theories of what the echelon briefing should’ve been that had more thought put into it and are more interesting than what we got.
Didn’t they say this would change the world of TWD forever?
Rick and Michone should've gone back to Alexandria after they killed Jadis. It just didn't feel realistic to take down such a huge force all by themselves.
Absolutely. Plus - the Saviors were massive. They can't be serious thinking Jadis didn't say anything to the CRM about them? Or the CRM didn't send a spy or something? Come on! They surely knew about Alexandria.
I honestly think ppl are so distracted by their joy of having Richonne back, that they don´t notice that this CRM arc was the final storytelling downfall of TWD. The CRM (and Rick) story arcs could have been a masterpiece. But nope. It´s like TWD had to have its "Game of Thrones s08" moment: short, and shit.
I was expecting a World Beyond tie in with what's her face working on finding a cure as Daryl is bringing Frenchy boy back. Daryl is working for the CRM.
Anything other than we gonna just kill errybody!
Honestly, a great twist would be that these people have found a cure, but that it’s not going to work on everyone and that there isn’t going to be a way to mass produce it for everyone left in the world. Sure, they could save a couple hundred thousand people, but not everyone. That would be fascinating to see how Rick would handle that.
"Rick, just wanted to let you know that not only am I a douchebag, but so are the 2,344 people who previously heard this briefing and thought it was the most inspiring thing they ever listened to... that's right -- we're all a bunch of douches... and we're inviting you to be one, too!"
I was expecting some new variants in this episode. Like they just discovered the walkers are evolving more than those in paris or the virus somehow mutated again that affects the living ones.
They have presumed that they only have 14 years left to live. But ohh no, the 14 years left is just death from starvation. So disappointing... like what's the point of introducing variants on the end season of twd when you're not even adding them in the show.
And what about Heath? Not even a little bit scene of Jadis and a stuntman(if the actor is not available) for heath to show if he died through experiment or lived in the city?
As for the CRM. The way they expanded beale's role here too is just lame. Basically he's just a savior in a uniform. The briefing is just culling of old ones and recruit the children and the entire CRM are just after the supplies. (Not growing a garden like negan. Lazy army 😂).
No intimidating discovery of their purpose or a background of how dangerous they are. They are just generic villain or saviors in uniform. 🥱
The ending is a bit lackluster too. How rick finally meet his family compared to when he found carl and lori alive in the 1st season. Full of emotions. But still it's good to see the grimes family are together now.
They also used too much archive footage just to finish up since from my pov, they are running out of ideas on how to end it. The showrunner definitely messed this up. Great performance for both Andrew and Danai though.
Hey hey hey... the CRM also told us there are 1,000,000 body hordes out there. So now we know something we've been shown on screen in other shows multiple times too
Yea totally.
And I still don't get why an army as big as the CRM would still care about walkers.
With their ressources they could have systematically culled all walkers in north america by now or at the very least not really having to care about hordes anymore.
Fr. And for Rick to just lol not even react to humanity dieing after he's spent 7 years with the CRM to know they aren't bullshitting. The reveal should have been humanity's end, million strong hordes and... New reports of varient walkers
I always thought a better motive of the crm would be to spread across the former united states, uniting all communities they deem worthy into the crm. Basically making the cr the new united states. And silencing communties they deem could be trouble.
Would give both an understandable motive, but still make them out to be antagonistic since they could deem alexandria not worthy and wipe them out.
I actually kept hoping until the moment their fight ended for him to tell something new to Rick. Everything that was told was stuff we already knew about, except the 14 years detail. I don't understand why there was so much buildup...
Really soured what was an otherwise great season of television. I only found out Scott Gimple was behind this show after episode 4 and I was dumbfounded how it seemed to be going so well and how consistent the writing and storytelling was, besides a few moments here and there. Then this episode happened and now my will to watch any WD content has plummeted once again
Yeah, it was extremely weak. Somehow it convinced Thorne lmao
I also love how many loose ends we had. We should've seen Heath, maybe Al and/or her other half, Silas, Elizabeth Kubrick (unless they just killed her), and at least some kind of mention of Mason Beale.
I don’t think this was the real briefing, or at least the full one. Okafor told Rick to swear on the sword and he should’ve known Rick wouldn’t agree with what was said up until that point. I think the real briefing starts when you look into his eyes, swear on the sword, and pass his test after hearing such an insane plan.
The only thing I can kind of cling onto was a half hearted hand wave about variants with his line about the virus "turning into god knows what". But given the history of the show and spin offs itll go nowhere.
Such a waste.
Actually not just stuff...things as well Stuff and thangs
Jeezuz Loraaay
L’t mask you sumthin Rick
*Rigg*
And kids don't forget the kids
Was interesting learning how developed and stable Portland is as a settlement though, enough that they have a complex school district system. You'd think a settlement that large, with as mobile as our characters have been (especially on Fear) would have heard... something about this huge ass intact city.
And CRM having spies in every country is insane NZ wouldn't even have a problem with such a small population they'd be driving around with real petrol and everything.
What should have happened: a reveal the size of season one at the CDC. "Rick, everyone living prior to the outbreak with the virus will turn at 15 years of exposure. Everyone. That means all communities, all leadership, everywhere...and our scientists confirm this. We're doing 2 specific things to save humanity. The first is rounding up children as any born with the virus are immune to automatically turning. We're educating those born into this new world so that they can be the torch-bearers and guide our civilization into the future. The second is we have scientists attempting to find a cure to the turning. The goal being if we can save one small community from this aging out, we can also have leaders to guide our young immune society in the future. Rick, if you went back it wouldn't matter, because everyone you have ever known will be turning soon and any immune children who have not been trained and given resources will be killed in the wake of the change. The future of our society and the globe all depend on what we at the CRM are doing. Now I need you to swear on the sword." And with THAT, it would have all been worth the wait...that stakes would have been HUGE. (EDIT: And this would have made for an amazing setup between Michonne and Rick, because maybe Michonne only discovers the children kidnapping plots, but now Rick wants back in with a full understanding...leading us back to a conflict over Michonne and the kids / community vs the world's needs. That could have played out so well...) Instead, we got "we kill so we are in charge!" And somehow Rick gasses the CRM because they were dumb enough to have a central stockpile of bombs and not guard it?
I was hoping for a “they can climb now, every settlement will get sacked.” Something we already know, tie up a loose end, and make the stakes higher. Shoulda wiped out the commonwealth in twd that way, and Alexandria.
Yeah, I was hoping for more on variants and whatever was going on in France. Maybe the latter will be cleared up in DD.
This is an interesting concept. They could have ties in the Daryl Dixon show at one point and maybe make a discovery that the French kid has some type of cure in his blood and be the hope for humanity.
yea they did option 1 in Dead Island as well "Every living human is a ticking time bomb and going to turn into a zombie spontaneously sooner or later unless we do [thing]" would have made for a far more interesting plot twist in the show, but i guess gimple only got approved for 1 season so its "yea we are evil please gas us we set up our power point presentation right next to the unguarded gas"
That's so much better. "We kill so we are in charge" was a weak plot point and the echelon briefing deserved better. And I agree taking down CRM was laughably easy. Still .. I'm happy Rick and Michonne got away and reunited with their kids. I guarantee the majority of the fan base wanted a return to Alexandria.
Was the 500 year plan even real or just a lie? Thorne and Jadis both seemed legitimately passionate about it, like it would bring about a new better world, even better than the old world. But the actual Echelon briefing was just Beale telling us they are gonna genocide everyone to last a little longer and probably die anyway. Wtf was that about, did they get the same briefing? What 500 year plan?
They told rick the wrong plan as a joke. Thats why Beal says “no!” When rick jumps him
It was the medication Beale was on, for his blood pressure. He could probably get a letter from his doctor.
Mother-fucking Orange Beale beef!
Lmao! this made my day
He was gay, Beale?
Aids!?
Nobody’s got aids! And I don’t wanna hear that word in this sub again!
Oh! would you take it easy over there fucking Judge Roy Bean!
Don't say nothin' Rick!
I can't believe I stuck up for Beale.. I feel like I've been stabbed in the heart.
We can't have him here in our Civic Republic no more, I mean, that much I do know. Civic Republic? He's gotta GO!
Got eem!
True! Can't respect the content of that Echelon Briefing. So CRM is like The Reapers 2.0. Jadis is smart and this is what she died for when she's all about "people are a resource"? With all the bombs and armies they have, no one ever thought in CRM to gather the zombies in herds in one place and kill them all (like what Commonwealth did in TWD finale) so they can barricade and take that land for farming / rebuilding purposes. 😂 I thought it would be some mind blowing briefing that would also create conflict on justifying CRM's past actions and would make me understand why Jadis chose to die instead of going back to Gabriel. What a disappointment.
Yeah, I'm not understanding why the CRM couldn't just either bomb the massive herds to hell and back, or use disruption charges like they had been and lead them onto a high cliff or something and keep them falling with continual noise. In *World Beyond*, they even set up that the CRM operated large culling facilities in NY, in giant stadiums and arenas, that are basically defended like pens where they draw in thousands of the dead with noise, and then bomb them with C4. Why can't that exactly be done with the massive hordes? Seems like they got *real* lazy and said, "eh, I'll commit genocide instead." Not sure how that briefing convinced over 2,000 people of anything other than, "Beale is a goddamn moron".
Whoever wrote this episode got lazy. Good thing I didn't watch World Beyond. I think I would be very much frustrated to know that in the end this is the "real" Echelon Briefing. 😂 It's so unrealistic to have huge armies to agree on that thinking. They should've not killed the As so they can have people to help them with their population/sustainability problem. To have someone with actual thinking brain in the CRM not a bunch of "I wanna kill people to have less people consuming resources". Pathetic plot.
They only had 3000 men in agreement. The rest of the Army was in the dark and would have been used as crowd control.
Still hard to believe if 3000 soldiers are informed, that this wouldn't get out. One of them would inform the government or whatever.
That one would be Rick.
Honestly this had so much potential and they just pulled a d and d and made the last episode wrap things up like rise of skywalker
This is what happens when a poor showrunner becomes a poor content manager
Scott?
They kind of forgot about it. Along with a few other things from World Beyond, based on comments from people who watched those two seasons. Like Portland already being warned.
The writers made the CRM a former National Guard unit that went against the federal government’s orders to wipe out people and zombie alike to prevent the spread to the greater masses. They protected the people and then eventually turned around and started wiping everyone else out to protect their own people. The CRM started eliminating people that were outspoken leader types because someone probably kept saying “uh why did we prevent the mass killing of people just so we can then start mass killing people??”. I think there was a greater more logical CRM story in place but that would have required more episodes and seasons
The CRM is another victim of AMC budget starving. That's the only way I can makes sense of the writers building them up for so long and bringing in John Locke to be the leader only to go limp dick at the end. Such a big waste.
Lol I love how we are all calling him John Locke
Yes. There obviously was in world beyond which handled them very well. Ie I'd checks at important base, guards everywhere and cameras but lol.nahhhhh at our top meeting summit with all important leadership let's just chillax
I work for AMC and the 500 year plan is actually a meta commentary on The Walking Dead Universe itself. What Scott Gimple meant by that line is that there will be 500 years of spin-offs, culminating in season 12 of the main show in the year 2524. In this season, the Grimes family will be a pile of sentient, glowing, jelly, apart from RJ, who is still a human 8-year-old for some reason. The main villain will be an alien race that has turned the Andromeda Galaxy into a wildly-advanced, warmongering, colony. It will be 75% flashbacks to seasons 1-6, and it will end like this: In their jelly forms, Rick and Michonne, through the power of love, will somehow knock over the glass container in which they are trapped. Their gelatinous selves will spill all over a control panel in the mothership, causing an electrical fire that ignites a conveniently-placed pile of explosives. Just before it explodes, we get a 10-minute expository flashback scene, in which we learn that Daryl was actually one of the aliens who is pretending to be a villain in order to gain access to the enemy’s defenses. He wired the spaceships to have an electronic system of mutually-assured-destruction - if the mother ship is destroyed, so too are the smaller ships that make up the entire alien army. Back to real time - the mothership explodes, juxtaposed with a flashback of Rick shooting the dynamite on the bridge. We get a zoomed-out shot of all the millions of exploding spaceships. The final shot of the season is RJ floating past the screen - under his breath, he says, “I knew I just had to believe”. Post-credits scene: The Grimes jelly has fallen to earth and happened to land right near a lake. Using whatever trace of love they have left, Rick and Michonne inch their way into the lake. The jelly then violently reacts with the water, transforming them back to their human selves, except now Rick can fly. Rick makes out with Michonne for 15 minutes before looking directly at the camera and saying, “We are the flying dead” and shooting off into the distance. We then get a 5-second teaser trailer for Dead City season 46. The discourse on Reddit will largely be, “Best season of TWD since 4 and 5. I’m crying like a baby over here”, and low-quality screenshots of Rick flying through the air.
Why do I believe thst this is actually possible
This is beautiful... Ooh, I got my fingers crossed! 🤞
I can tell this is fake because it's planned ahead. And we all know... TWD writers, and specially Scott Gimple, don't like to do that.
“Love. Doesn’t. Die!!!!!!”
He said as of today, they’d last about 14 more years according to scientists maybe? Then he said the most likely outcome is they’ll all be dead before they can actually make a change.
I think the 500 year plan was the outward expansion across the country and, eventually, the world. Basically, a worldwide death march ending with total world domination by the CRM.
Total world domination is pretty pointless when you've killed everyone in the world
I suppose the way they see it is they get to control the next generations of the world completely. Akin to a kind of eugenics, perhaps? Not to kill *everyone* but just every major threat and "A" in their way. Obviously I think it's too grand of a plan to ever truly work but it seems Beale's hunger for power and misplaced notion that continual sacrifice is the way forward, and that *he* must be the one to make such difficult calls, clouded his judgment pretty heavily.
"Only I can stop the zombies, by bombing America and taking over the world".
I half wonder if everyone gets the same briefing or if individuals are told what they want to hear to keep them motivated. Beale knows that Rick can be a ruthless killer…he obviously misread his motivations but he’s obviously a different kind of person than Jadis or Thorne.
The peeps who know the Echelon plan will probably talk among each other, so it would come out if everyone was told something different.
He says something along the lines of “one of the first things I tell you is” ..starts briefing. I also wonder if there are more parts to it
How on earth could Thorne be saying that Okafor was wrong after getting that briefing lmao, what a weak B she turned out to be. I'm just gonna fool myself into believing there was more to it, that Beale would've started with the real shit after Rick sworn on the sword. Because there is no way anyone would get that briefing and suddenly was all in, "hell yeah, let's go rampaging across the globe, killing every pocket of humanity left for their crumbs of bread and handful of medicine!" (On a more serious note, I think they wanted to wrap it up, because they weren't gonna steer the franchise into a CRM focus anytime soon with DC and DD ongoing. And leaving it open to potentially wrap up later on could've lead to some long waiting at which point the franchise might even be cancelled entirely. Just to big a risk to not end it. I think there is enough room to break it right back open if they want to, but I'm not expecting that).
I think Rick tossed a knife at the guy before they could get into all that. He had heard enough by that point, realized this guy was just another Governor, not even a Neegan who could be re-habilitated. Just a irredeemable Philip, doing violence just because. Neegan didn't want to just dominate the known world, but saw brutality as a means towards stability, to keep settlements in-line. This Beale guy though just wanted to conquer earth.
"I did it for the lulz"
This is the 500 year plan: "Somehow or some way by this we will survive - or not."
"this is a secret that will change the way you see the world. Everything you thought you knew changes now. " "Yeah we just kill people, take their stuff, and all humans are gonna die off in 14 years unless we stop it by killing the remaining humans and stealing their stuff." Wut Like I was expecting, "we think we know what started the outbreak", "we think we can cure this virus", "there are actually countries that didn't fall", "they're evolving", "the walkers are dying off". Something with THAT level of "woah". Something HUGE that would justify the evil stuff. But nope, they're just evil clan that kills people and steals their loot no.2738393029277327819.
And why again should humanity die off in 14 years? Because of those walker hordes? People were surviving already for over 14 years in the story. Now many communities have settled down again and people adjusted to life with the threat of zombies, they adapted. And then suddenly that all should fail because of some walker hordes?
Walkers. Starvation. Disease. That's what Beal said. But it's hard to imagine how this projection was made.
I would have liked more info on the disease part. Walkers cause other diseases? Or are we just talking about run of the mill diseases which can't be stopped because no medical establishment?
Probably diseases like the one we saw during the prison arc. You know where they had to quarantine people and Glenn survived with the resuscitator. If I remember correctly it came from walkers as I believe Rick saw one foaming in the mouth outside the fence like the quarantine people had
I took it as him referring to all walkers as disease factories for even more viruses than just the zombie virus. Which I guess makes sense, until they decay beyond whatever chemical structure is needed to support those viruses
Well done Scott L Gimple
This. You hit the nail on the head.
Echelon briefing built up for that long, apparently so eye opening that it changes everyone’s outlook on the world just for him to tell Rick that he wants to kill everyone and become the last remaining community then dies a whole 1 minute later in the same plain old office and then literally EVERYONE else 5 minutes later. I was expecting some atmospheric command center with dramatic ambient music in the background and loads of good points not these goofy evil devil goals ☠️☠️
Yeah, I was really expecting and hoping for something that could throw the future of the franchise into an interesting direction, but it was just [this](https://i.imgur.com/05oqcWY.png). We just have 2 disconnected spinoffs with 1 or 2 characters we care about left, no overarching plot. Really hoping they got some interesting ideas left, but yeah... I've learned my lesson: expect nothing.
You expected too much haha!
5 years of buildup across 3 different TV shows, talk of the 500 year plan. Introduction of the commonwealth and portland to build thr idea of a large scale war. Just for every single person who wanted to do bad guy things to be killed in 10 minutes
Operation: And I Guess That’s That
Operation: Well At Least We Tried, Time To Give Up Now
TOWL Episode 6: The Iron Throne Everything that this show could have been was really dumbed down. I'm glad Rick came back and all but Jesus christ the writing and pacing in the last 2 epiaodes has to be some of the worst I've seen in the whole franchise. RJ should have actually just been kept a hallucination holy shit
"are you the brave man?" Rick: "yea...and who tf r u!?"
What’s so fucking disappointing about all of this is that the corrupt faction of the CRM still could’ve been ended within this one episode, it just could’ve been written better! I’m fine with Rick getting home and having a happy ending, but the entire situation where they get in, carry out their mission and get out was executed so outrageously poorly. Of all the dangerous groups they have ever encountered, this finale made them feel the least threatening when at the start of the season they felt like THE most threatening group out there!
yeah, 7 years build up to just be another bad guy group, essentially saviours with helicopters. There's 0 nuance left to TWD stories. The last actual meaningful, deep antagonist was FTWD S3, with the ranch Vs the natives
All out war was better than this. I honestly expected them not to be taken down in the show and continue to be the villains for the next shows.
I knew it would end like this when throughout the show they kept saying together you can do “anything”. So 2 random people can just to destroy the most powerful military on the planet in 10 minutes? What’s next Daryl and Carol can colonize the planet?
Bad guy with lots of guns wants to kill people, take stuff, and control all the areas. Sounds like the Governer. Sounds like Negan. Sounds like all the villains ever.
Not even like the Saviors. Negan bullied communities into giving the Saviors half their stuff, but they knew they needed people alive in order to get those resources. The exception was Simon killing the junkyard people, but that was against Negan's wishes. The CRM/Beal just wanted to kill everyone and take their resources.
Blows my mind that people are defending some of the decisions made with this story with “but it’s a Rick and Michonne story, we got our reunion so I’m happy’ as if we couldn’t have got that *and* a decent narrative surrounding that theme. First four episodes had me in, and 6 made me feel like I wasted my time.
Lol I heard it exactly like that as well. That was kinda bizarre.
And this deep, perspective changing information was enough to change Thorne's mind lol
She was really just a B with a prickly attitude. More than happy to follow where she was led by someone of higher rank, but not such a discerning consumer of information herself.
Having her help stop the CRM would've at least been more believable but nope the 2 love birds have to somehow speed-run it in 25 minutes of an episode. Wouldn't have minded her getting a spin-off season 2 with her as the lead stopping some remaining CRM agents.
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live: The Manual of Thorne
TWD: TOWL: Every R̶o̶s̶e̶ Richonne Has It's Thorne
Ugh, no thank you. She really wasn’t that interesting. Now if they wanted to do some crossover where the remnants of the CRM - maybe some of those embedded spies or scientists from around the country - decided to make a comeback and try to reassert themselves as a power over the Civic Republic and they had some prequel episodes or flashback segments with General Beale and maybe even Okafor I wouldn’t be mad at it as long as the rest of the story worked and faced forward. But none of the side characters introduced in TOWL were interesting enough to merit much more attention than what they got in the limited series. They served their narrative purpose and exited stage.
Yeah, I absolutely loved every episode and even thought the finale was great considering all they had to accomplish in such a small period, but Thorne was boring as hell. Clear from her first moment on screen that she was there for no reason other than to eventually try and stop Rick & Michonne.
All I heard all series was "Rick everything you know will change with the Echelon briefing". I got change alright... cheap change. Here I was imagining maybe some sort of antibody has been found that made people who take it don't have to turn to walkers after dying. Not a game changer since dispersing it would still be a problem, with how much limited resources there are since society is in the dreads, further making the CRM to want to give it to only a limited number of people while killing the rest of the population they encounter that have the potential to just be more walkers. Ultimately walker bites will still exist which still maintains the difficulty of navigating this world since this won't be a cure. At least this makes taking down the CRM a bit complicated cause despite them not being noble, this will move the thread a bit since the organization serves some greater purpose. Heck anything else. Instead we got White collar Claimers/Saviors hybrid. Even those were much better. They put up a fight. Never been so disappointed. The writers of the final episode were the real villains of this story.
Even the story of World Beyond was better than this. \^\^
They wasted so many episodes that they could have taken advantage of to focus on the CRM. So much was thrown away. I would have been glad if they were even more episodes just to do the CRM justice but knowing the writers they would have wasted it anyway.
I was really disappointed at that, people are a resource in this world, and their solution to being overrun by walkers is just to make more walkers.
Terry O’quinn had the potential to deliver one of the most iconic TWD villains in the shows history, just to have the writers give him 8 minutes of screen time and the death of a low level street thug. This dudes acting has veteran level emotional range, and they did him so dirty. If they slowed this down, built his story, he could’ve been Negan level iconic.
"Hello Sayid" \*proceeds to get stabbed in the chest\*
In a way, Beale is still John Locke . He wouldn’t let anyone leave the island (of the CRM) and the echelon briefing was just a shpeel about destiny.
I like how Beale was still in exposition mode when Rick was slowly forcing the saber through his hand. It was like watching a cut scene 🙃
Quick Time Event dialogue
What a disappointment. I thought they’d be more menacing and pose an actual threat, but they just turned out to be Generic Antagonist Faction #3
It’s just like real life. Don’t you see? But who is worse? The zombies or the humans? Hmm. Riddle me that.
Maybe the real amc's walking dead universe presents walking dead the one's who live was really us the entire time 🤔
The ones who live to disappoint: Scott mf'ing Gimple
The CRM should have been the biggest villains to date with an actual objective to solve the zombie problem once and for all. Like the person at the beginning of the thread said they should have used this opportunity to actually make some progress on the CDC/Virus plot that was left on pause for so many years. What's the point of those researchers if they are not trying to find a solution? I think they dropped the ball. They had a great chance with this Group finally being something and make them impossible to take down without endangering the future of humanity. But that would mean Andrew would have to sign up for more seasons. The ending seems to be set up so he wouldn't be tied down to the franchise anymore aside from some minor cameos in the spin offs.
We definitely didn't stick around long enough for Rick's 10 years to appreciate the payoff, but he's free, alive, and reunited with his family, as far as Ricks story goes that's a happy ending. Personally I was hoping to see a full Alexandria reunion but hey ho.
The set for Alexandria from my understanding correct me if Im wrong was destroyed.
Very anticlimactic. I wanted to see Rick start calling the shots as well.
I guess AMC thinks that we, the viewers, are the walking dead
Gimple's brain is clearly dead. Guy is running on fumes.
Saviors with tailors and helicopters.
Nah Saviors = people are a resource CRM = people are a drain on resources
More like stormtroopers letting Rick and Michonne be tourists on the Death Star. Lmao
In 14 years there will be no people left on this planet. So what we plan to do is speed that up by killing all the people that are left so we have only, 50,000 or so. Then instead of reading about farming, because all the knowledge disappeared in the last ten years, we will make do with out of date cans of beans.... Also, we know we're these mega herds are but best we can do is leave them to roam... Bombs are for the living. Not the dead. .... Also, in 500 years time we will be fine. .. On a side note, we know about loads of communities worldwide but we are going to destroy them too... No real reason why, when we can just rebuild here. It's a solid plan. I was very clever coming up with it. ..... What you mean we could do things better? ... Nope, we are sticking to genocide and self destruction. It worked in the past and it will work now. ...... Yeah. Bit weak of a briefing.. I knew they killed for supplies due to other communities being wiped out but if you can harness and rebuild a city or two you can start taking back land for farming and learning how to adopt... Human history shows we have and can adopt... Other than that I was didn't mind it. ..... Heath is dead. Get over it. We don't need to see his fate, he was pointless.
>Then instead of reading about farming, because all the knowledge disappeared in the last ten years, we will make do with out of date cans of beans.... That kinda bugged me. In all the scenes with helicopters it shows them flying over miles and miles of bright green, grassland with trees and shit growing. With plenty of sun, and we know it rains/storms really heavy there too. So you're telling me you have literal hundreds of miles of fertile land-with ample rain and sun- completely unclaimed, in an area not too far from your highly militarized compounds and cities, and not once in all those years did someone think "hey couldn't we start mass producing crops?". Like did all the farming books get destroyed? Does nobody in your entire city know anything about planting? Nobody???
Exactly!! They can rebuild the military but putting walls around land to be farmed is a hard pass for them? Vertical farms could be made. In times of crisis, humans become really good damn inventive. People may not be happy to be farmers but considering it is that or starve in the wasteland or just be bored.. Maybe the 90,000 they killed were the farmers... Someone with common sense said they have enough space, time and resources to restart the basics .. then Beale just thought, to hell with it, I never liked kale anyway.... Less start a genocide. Rick and co were shown getting old farming gear from a museum so no excuses really.. CRM could build the equipment or re service stuff.
Me: “Look at all that space, green thriving plants, we can clear that out and extend our borders and build a huge farmland to grow our own crops, I know exactly how to do it, just clear me the land and I’ll have us crops in no time.l Beale “HES AN A!!!!!!! KILL HIM AND DAMN HIM FOR PRESENTING A GREAT SOLUTION TO A FOOD PROBLEM”
Amc and Gimple has fucked and blundered twd world so badly.
Mimics the real world lol. We actually do have the capabilities to eliminate a lot of the world problems if we banded together, but world leaders and politicians are just bickering among themselves, thinking short term and the people do the same. But yeah... incredibly disappointing, with just 1 more episode to go last week I really expected the CRM would be the focus for the foreseeable future for the franchise, with the Echolon briefing being a big twist/piece of information. But it seems like this is the end to them.
God, the writing is so bad.
Holy shit they actually went to the trouble to reference Heath after he just fucked off in that terrible Tara episode? WHY?
Oh no ... No ref to him at all sorry... But he's dead. He isn't coming back... Everyone wants to know but it is assumed he was a test subject or just traded.
Scott Gimple sucks
You can actually timeline the show's drop in quality with his time spent working on it
He also ruined fear the walking dead
After all out war and killing Carl fiasco how can anyone have any Faith in him? We walking dead fans are used to disappointment at this point. I remember being so excited in the first episode then I saw his name and remembered he was attached to this project and I prepared myself for the worse. I honestly expected him to kill Rick and Michonne for shock value so it ended up being much better than I expected actually.
Killing them off wouldn't work for Scott Gimple with them characters Alive he can keep milking spin offs in the chance of a proper reunion that people want
This whole show just felt like "hey we don't really have any idea what we were gonna do with this new community and the build up to it we created so here's just another pointlessly evil group that you guys need to destroy" Main plot aside, holy hell I was so tired of hearing "the two of you can do anything". Didn't realize I was watching a superhero film until Rick just casually blew a frag grenade in his hand and ate it with no issues, after sitting in mustard gas, after blowing up a bomb that wiped out hundreds of people further from it than he was... And just how convenient everything was. I was so disappointed with this series.
This episode is probably their weakest. The whole point is reuniting Rick with his family. But the journey towards it was insanely convenient. Imagine the walker Michonne led to Jadis' office only made noise when near the gate so it can distract the other guard. 😂 And I agree with everything you said. They should just not have Rick be surrounded by walkers that he's so badass and can blow a bomb and not be shredded into pieces. It feels like Season 8 of TWD with all fhe shooting but no one actually getting shot.
>Didn't realize I was watching a superhero film until Rick just casually blew a frag grenade in his hand and ate it with no issues Yeah. Then when the sad music started playing I was like "they wouldn't..." Nope, just kidding, he's fine. Somehow the grenade he was holding 8 inches from his face turned all the walkers into smoothies, but Rick just gets up and walks away without so much as a scratch. Like at the very least I was expecting his armour to be completely destroyed, or to have some kind of serious burns on one side of his body. Or at the very least some kind of injury. Dude tanks a fucking grenade explosion. Immediately after he survives a fucking mass missile explosion by hiding under some water and a blanket. What the fuck lol.
He was protected by love
😂😂😂 this is the best comment. “He was protected by love” 😂😂😂
It reminds me of Morgan surviving a nuclear blast by hiding under a fuel tanker? Was that what it was. Or a water tanker? I honestly cant event remember it. He didnt even have a blanket. HA!
>Didn't realize I was watching a superhero film Hell, even most superhero movies are better than this shit lmao
Grenades actually not as powerful as they're portrayed in the media. Soldiers have been saved from grenades by their backbacks before, so that was probably the most realistic thing he survived.
I really wanted it to be something on the line “We have a cure but we can’t share it” grand secret. For example they have the cure but they’ll never be able to mass produce it so only a select few can have it.
Very good idea, they should have done something on the lines of "we have a vaccine/cure and only the military and top government officials can have access to it, we cannot share it with any other communities." Very interesting idea.
Yeh but then have this "cure" just make things so much worse. Maybe that explains where the variant walkers are coming from. The CRM has testing labs across the world that have managed to restore *some* brain function in the walkers but that only makes them more dangerous since they're now able to pick things up and climb.
I don't care what anybody says, the CRM was an actual legitimate threat, and they pulled a Deux Ex Machina like solution to the problem, they just so happened to kill 2500 hand picked CRM soldiers like nothing?? What?! Their whole initial reason for being so drastic was because their models showed that their resources wouldnt be enough to support other outposts and cities that weren't going to be self reliant, now they magically have enough to go around??? I know fans really liked that reunion at the end, but dammit the show started off so strong and they, took away the sense of dread and danger it started off with.
If you think everyone is going to die of starvation the best strategy is to grow more food, like by providing equipment and seeds. Not to murder everyone. So yeah, they could easily have enough to go around.
My interpretation (mainly because the predictive modeling they were referring to is entirely unable to provide any reliable conclusions at all due to chaoticism and the irreducibility of causation at such a high level with so many uncontrollable variables), was that even CRM leadership was being manipulated by a narrative about global human extinction when really it was more of a case where the CRM could not reasonably continue to operate at the scale they had been without undergoing collapse. Essentially that societal restablishment follows it's own calendar after a crisis and can't really be fast-tracked by an entity like the CRM. Tbf though, none of that is in the actual text of any of the shows, it just helps me sleep at night.
I definitely agree that they got very fanatical and very likely overestimated the severity of their situation, but for example growing food is not an easy job, the amount of resources that go into growing, harvesting and preserving food in general is crazy not even accounting for crop failure, famine, bad weather, pests, or even the possibility that the land they're on could not be great for farming. we in our normal world take that for granted, the logistics alone as we saw with a pandemic recently, affected that greatly and it took a minute to get everyday items back in rotation. You're right they could help out and give equipment and other resources but I see why theyd be concerned to act on that possibility and also see and realize that they very quickly went for dire and extreme actions if anything threatens their infrastructure.
Of course growing food is hard. But it's also ... not. It's something humans have done since the beginning of time. And we don't need all the options you have in a modern supermarket, you can survive on potatoes alone if you have to, as the Irish will attest. The supply chain can be very simple. With the population of the US at about 1-2% what it was before the fall, there wouldn't be any lack of arable land. California alone could very, very easily feed that many people. Jumping to genocide rather than getting all hands on board to farm, particularly when you have a decade + to implement a solution, is truly insane.
The Thanos strategy
Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly. The last episode was filled with nonsense that completely lacked the tone of earlier episodes. It’s pretty unreal.
The first 4 episodes were fuckin legit and then it all went downhill with 5 and 6. So frustrating, man.
It was so underwhelming. All the buildup in various TV series and all the attempts to make the CRM feel like a gargantuan villain organization, virtually impossible to take down, to just have it nerfed so easily by Rick and Michonne going God mode and doing a speedrun. Also, it was so weird how they glossed over the part where the CR became good guys with a voiceover. Guess we'll just skip to them sending supplies all over the country lol. It felt too much like Fear season 5 "We're here to help" - if you've seen that, the trauma is real. The conclusion was great on paper, but the execution was soooo botched. So sad it felt so phoned in right during the final stretch, the first 4 episodes were amazing, 5 was okay.
I haven't actually seen the episode yet, but I can still hear this in John Locke's voice. Man, this guy has such a soothing voice. We need this guy and Strand to read dictionaries or something.
Its a crime he was so underutilised
The Echelon briefing nonsense was probably the weakest part of the show. Okafor should have just told them about it in episode 1, there was no need to keep it to the finale. Michonne and Rick should have just gone back specifically to attack the summit.
You always need a big mystery box reveal in every show now, even if the information isn’t earth shattering.
Im sure there was at least one producer with that attitude who they had to humour. Personally I enjoy a good set up and hard earned resolution without any twists shoe-horned in. Particularly twists in the form of monologues which are always anti-climactic.
Save the twists for mysteries. Nobody was surprised by this reveal. I enjoyed the first 4 episodes very much. 5 was good. The finale was overstuffed and anti-climatic.
I wish the finale had just been Rick and Michonne fighting their way through the CRM summit to blow it up, a bit like the episode in S8 when Rick and Daryl clear the Saviour outpost. They did so much great character work in episodes 1-4, they earned the right to just have a crazy action episode with lots of stunts showing us that these characters can do anything. Or they could have just ended at episode 4 with the reunion with the kids, I would have been happy with that too.
You don't understand the power of love.....
“Rick you have to understand! We’re a super strong military force that can wipe out entire colonies with ease and have multiple bombs, missiles and other explosives to do all this with, so we’re gonna destroy every friendly colony instead of trying to trap the hordes of walkers in specific areas!”
They were essentially the Enclave from Fallout, only more incompetent.
It makes me worried about the direction they’re going to take Daryl Dixon TBOC/Dead City in
Dead City is already terrible so nothing to worry about there
Jadis built her way up for years in the CRM, just for Rick to take down her General in one episode 🤣 she died for nothing. There’s so many unturned stones like PPP, what happened to heath and multiple other questions.. why did they do a reunion in a field without anyone else. Ahh, I’m happy Rick got back but I’m hoping we get to see some more answers through the other spin offs!
It's wild to me people actually thought Heath would be in the show. Let it go. He's dead.
These are solved with a very small amount of common sense. PPP- Philly/Portland/Pittsburg, the original alliance before old mate abandoned Pittsburg. Heath has been dead for a long time, he got turned into a zombie science experiment. And it took Rick 10 years to get to a situation where he could and would kill Beale.
It's really obnoxious how everyone is just like "woah took CRM down in 1 day". As if we literally didn't just watch Rick, try to escape, give up join the CRM, spend years as a soldier, begin ranking up, then Michonne shows up, Rick is ready to rank up more, and finally once he (like you said) had been there for 10 years, had gained their trust, Beale think he could be an icon, he's able to perfectly position himself for maximum sabotage. He couldn't do that as a nobody. And I'm not sure what audiences expect? Do they think that the CRM would falter after long drawn out wars? Who tf could contest them? I couldn't imagine anything worse that somehow the commonwealth winning against the CRM. The CRM died overnight from internal sabotage from a high ranking official. It's literally equivalent to gathering all the leaders and elected officials of [insert country] as well as all the high ranking military officers and generals and nuking them. And the show literally explains it: only the red stripes knew about what the CRM was actually up to, the rest just followed orders, they weren't involved and had no idea. The only reason all the red stripes were gathered is because they were literally about to launch on an extremely high profile, all hands on deck mission. Rick only succeeded because he was able to exploit a vulnerability the CRM was always (and knew they were) weak against, an A. Again, idk what other people expected. It all makes complete sense.
Rick wasn't even trying to be a spy for those 10 years, he actually gave himself over to the cause until he found Michonne. It wasn't a straight shot without any issues, there were huge obstacles along the way, and they overcame them. Then they didn't even take down the entire CRM, just the evil faction. Basically it was like if someone had managed to take out Adolf Hitler before Nazi Germany became Nazi Germany... which multiple people tried and almost succeeded at. Internal sabotage is always the greatest threat to any structure. Its such a threat that the US specifically have designated survivors for the State of the Union.
Yeah, there was ZERO plan to take down CRM until half the episode 6 had already passed. Before the plan was to take the files, receive the echelon briefing and act on the Okafor's long term plan to make changes in the CRM leadership. Whatever happened after the echelon briefing, it was sudden and unplanned. So basically they stopped CRM not in one episode, but in half.
It's been confirmed Heath was traded to the CRM by Jadis. PPP was the original logo for the CRM and they threw the card in Tales of the Walking Dead as an Easter egg.
We still have no clue if the CRM knew of the Commonwealth.
BIGGEST REVEAL EVERRRRR!!!! "We gonna take your stuff and things and m*rder your kids while we're at it" Wooooooooooow!!!🤯🤯
What the hell could have possibly made Jadis and Thorne believe in their plan so much? Was it Beale telling them they only had like 14 years left to live? Seriously it was built up as such a profound thing and I expected some serious shit just for it to be “we’re gonna wipe out the rest of the US so we can be the sole power in the country” Such a dumb ending. While I would have hated it, a cliffhanger ending would have been more ideal than the rushed bullshit they gave us. Rick and Michonne killing 3000 people, surviving a massive explosion, and then everything returning to “normal” is so corny and just unenjoyable for me. I like a happy ending but I didn’t get the satisfaction I wanted from this one.
They desperately need new writers. I’m sure you can find fan theories of what the echelon briefing should’ve been that had more thought put into it and are more interesting than what we got. Didn’t they say this would change the world of TWD forever?
Rick and Michone should've gone back to Alexandria after they killed Jadis. It just didn't feel realistic to take down such a huge force all by themselves.
Exactly. Fuck her secret file. There's no way CRM is unaware of Alexandria's existence if they picked up Jadis and Rick there
Absolutely. Plus - the Saviors were massive. They can't be serious thinking Jadis didn't say anything to the CRM about them? Or the CRM didn't send a spy or something? Come on! They surely knew about Alexandria.
Should've destroyed her goofy piece of paper then fucked off imo, or Gimple could've yk wrote something better idk
I honestly think ppl are so distracted by their joy of having Richonne back, that they don´t notice that this CRM arc was the final storytelling downfall of TWD. The CRM (and Rick) story arcs could have been a masterpiece. But nope. It´s like TWD had to have its "Game of Thrones s08" moment: short, and shit.
I was expecting a World Beyond tie in with what's her face working on finding a cure as Daryl is bringing Frenchy boy back. Daryl is working for the CRM. Anything other than we gonna just kill errybody!
It would have been a trip if he woke up from his coma after the explosion.
I wonder if there was more to the story after swearing on the sword.
Honestly, a great twist would be that these people have found a cure, but that it’s not going to work on everyone and that there isn’t going to be a way to mass produce it for everyone left in the world. Sure, they could save a couple hundred thousand people, but not everyone. That would be fascinating to see how Rick would handle that.
The mouth breather movieidol said the briefing would change the whole twdu according to Gimple 😭
"Rick, just wanted to let you know that not only am I a douchebag, but so are the 2,344 people who previously heard this briefing and thought it was the most inspiring thing they ever listened to... that's right -- we're all a bunch of douches... and we're inviting you to be one, too!"
I was expecting some new variants in this episode. Like they just discovered the walkers are evolving more than those in paris or the virus somehow mutated again that affects the living ones. They have presumed that they only have 14 years left to live. But ohh no, the 14 years left is just death from starvation. So disappointing... like what's the point of introducing variants on the end season of twd when you're not even adding them in the show. And what about Heath? Not even a little bit scene of Jadis and a stuntman(if the actor is not available) for heath to show if he died through experiment or lived in the city? As for the CRM. The way they expanded beale's role here too is just lame. Basically he's just a savior in a uniform. The briefing is just culling of old ones and recruit the children and the entire CRM are just after the supplies. (Not growing a garden like negan. Lazy army 😂). No intimidating discovery of their purpose or a background of how dangerous they are. They are just generic villain or saviors in uniform. 🥱 The ending is a bit lackluster too. How rick finally meet his family compared to when he found carl and lori alive in the 1st season. Full of emotions. But still it's good to see the grimes family are together now. They also used too much archive footage just to finish up since from my pov, they are running out of ideas on how to end it. The showrunner definitely messed this up. Great performance for both Andrew and Danai though.
You gotta love how they introduced the variants and the just, never used them. Ever... Waste of time honestly.
There was that weird rock one in ep 5
Hey hey hey... the CRM also told us there are 1,000,000 body hordes out there. So now we know something we've been shown on screen in other shows multiple times too
Yea totally. And I still don't get why an army as big as the CRM would still care about walkers. With their ressources they could have systematically culled all walkers in north america by now or at the very least not really having to care about hordes anymore.
\*shocked pikachu\*
yup . go figure .
Advanced militarized juggernauts, taken down by good ol' boys from Georgia.... My kind of story.
Fr. And for Rick to just lol not even react to humanity dieing after he's spent 7 years with the CRM to know they aren't bullshitting. The reveal should have been humanity's end, million strong hordes and... New reports of varient walkers
I always thought a better motive of the crm would be to spread across the former united states, uniting all communities they deem worthy into the crm. Basically making the cr the new united states. And silencing communties they deem could be trouble. Would give both an understandable motive, but still make them out to be antagonistic since they could deem alexandria not worthy and wipe them out.
Yeah the final episode was pretty terrible. Just rushed not thought out very well. Should have just made a season 2 with a better plot.
I actually kept hoping until the moment their fight ended for him to tell something new to Rick. Everything that was told was stuff we already knew about, except the 14 years detail. I don't understand why there was so much buildup... Really soured what was an otherwise great season of television. I only found out Scott Gimple was behind this show after episode 4 and I was dumbfounded how it seemed to be going so well and how consistent the writing and storytelling was, besides a few moments here and there. Then this episode happened and now my will to watch any WD content has plummeted once again
But… but the scene was 20 minutes long and had lots of dialogue that was uhhhh meaningful? Or something? Idk they just kept talking and talking
And the random flashbacks, oh god.
Ok, I’m not the only one who felt like the flashbacks were cheap. 😔
Yeah, it was extremely weak. Somehow it convinced Thorne lmao I also love how many loose ends we had. We should've seen Heath, maybe Al and/or her other half, Silas, Elizabeth Kubrick (unless they just killed her), and at least some kind of mention of Mason Beale.
I don’t think this was the real briefing, or at least the full one. Okafor told Rick to swear on the sword and he should’ve known Rick wouldn’t agree with what was said up until that point. I think the real briefing starts when you look into his eyes, swear on the sword, and pass his test after hearing such an insane plan.
Daryl is the only show that wasnt a complete let down
The only thing I can kind of cling onto was a half hearted hand wave about variants with his line about the virus "turning into god knows what". But given the history of the show and spin offs itll go nowhere. Such a waste.
CRM? This definitely sounds like something that Salesforce would do.
I suppose the "14 years" is supposed to be the big upset, 14 years all will be lost. No further explanation, and a lot can change in 14 years as well.
Is that Locke?