The Walking Dead Season 6 Finale Review: Torturous in the Best Way Possible

The Walking Dead Season 6 Finale Review: Torturous in the Best Way Possible

Kelley Ann Hornyak

I'm shocked at the negative reaction to tonight's episode of The Walking Dead, and I figured instead of a stream of tweets in response to that, I'd write a nice little blog piece about it. A bit more coherent and cohesive, you know?

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read the comics yet, you may want to check out here, because I am going to discuss how the build-up from the comics story is what made this television episode so torturous in the best way possible. I can tell you that there are few comic details on this page and not really anything beyond what you saw on your TV screen tonight, so you may want to just plunge ahead, but do so at your own discretion.

To begin, I have not read the comics yet and am actually saving them to read after the TV series has finished. I started watching the show first and I just don't want to mix up the two storylines in my head. That's generally my method. Having said that, I did familiarize myself with the pages about Lucille and the character that "she" takes from us, so I know what's up with that situation and why everyone was so anxious about this particular episode.

I believe that itself is the brilliance of the episode. The writers knew that most hardcore fans would know what was coming down the line, and even those who weren't quite that heavily into it would probably hear the buzz ahead of time. We were all terrified going into tonight's episode, and terrified throughout. The tension built and built. We felt like we were stuck in that RV with them, trapped by all the Saviors at every turn, slowly being encircled until there was no escape.

But the brilliance... the part which stuns and inspires me as a writer... is the fact that they knew we were anticipating a violent and visually shocking murder of a beloved character. We all knew that it could be anyone and not to assume it would be the character from the comics. I sent out this joking tweet tonight (with that oh-so-perfectly appropriate GIF since Tyler James Williams was previously a Walking Dead cast member):

And it's funny because it's true. When Negan is doing his eeny-meeny-miney-mo deal, I think your favorite character does in fact come to the forefront of your mind even if you couldn't make up your mind before. Up to now, I've thought that my top tier included Rick, Daryl, Michonne, Glen, Maggie, Carl, and Carol on pretty equal footing. But tonight I was ready to stand up and scream this for Rick:

Katniss Everdeen saying "I volunteer as tribute!" in The Hunger Games.

Katniss Everdeen saying "I volunteer as tribute!" in The Hunger Games.

I could probably write a series of blog posts on why I love and relate to each of the characters mentioned above, but I won't derail this post with that right now.

My point is that we were all waiting for that horribly violent ending — that horrific twist where one of our core cast members is taken out brutally. Giving us that would have been further fodder for those who love to hate things. The scene wouldn't have been how they imagined it, or it wouldn't have looked real enough, etc. Plus, they've done it before, time and time again. Hershel's decapitation wasn't exactly a gentle scene. And at the end of the day, if they had given us the answer to the "Who Is It?" question tonight, one group of the show's fans would be most impacted: The people who loved that particular character the most.

Instead, we were left with point-of-view shot of the murder — by the way, if that didn't disturb you at all, I'm afraid of you — and wondering which one of them just met their end. Every single character's fanbase is left questioning and pondering tonight, and we'll be doing that until the fall premiere of the next season. We're all in the same boat tonight (a timely little Fear the Walking Dead reference for you right there), whether we want to be or not. The writers encircled us like the Saviors encircled the group.

With that POV shot, they gave you a visual depiction of the torture that you've been going through leading up to and throughout this episode. You were the victim for a moment even though you knew you weren't the real victim (or maybe you are, as those are just fictional characters and you are the real one impacted).

To take it a step further, they made the situation enormous and inescapable. The survivors will likely have to somehow assimilate into this huge group if they want to make it out alive. The villain was deftly changed from the walkers to the other human beings. (That has nearly always been the case, but this is to the extreme, and yet still at least somewhat deserved, as our heroes definitely and quite deliberately turned into the bad guys this season.) That exploration of the human survival instinct is very George A. Romero-esque. (He doesn't seem to have an official home on the web right now, so I'm giving that link to one of my favorite living-dead-related sites. Such respect for the longevity and complexity of that site.) So, on that Romero note (the highest compliment I can give you, as he is my favorite director), bravo .👏

Now, the real twist for me is that people don't seem to be liking this. I think we'll have a better feel for people's reaction after a little time passes (similar to the 6A finale of Pretty Little Liars which really enraged a good portion of the fans but seems to now be making sense as we go into the seventh season... er, for some of us, anyway), but so far this is looking like one of those examples where writers and filmmakers can create something magnificent and yet people just do not react to it in the way that those artists might expect. It's why people pay for focus groups. It's why nobody can churn out a Thriller album time after time (or even just once again). People are unpredictable. Audiences are unpredictable. You just never know.

That's why I write with the intention of competing with and pleasing only myself. Trying to figure out what the audience wants is like trying to come up with a long-range weather forecast. Unexpected storms appear. What was supposed to be a deluge turns into a sunny beach day. You never know. You cannot know. It's not worth the time and effort to try and figure it out. Better to just write something that you know in your heart is good, and trust that it's good even if the audience gives you nothing but jeers and boos.

If it's not already obvious, I loved the episode. I reveled in the suspense, I marveled at the way they pulled us into the frustrating road trip as if we were one of the passengers on our way to our doom, I appreciated the fact that they stretched it out over 90 minutes (even with the insane amount of commercials) because it made it that much more suspenseful. I think the writers, the crew, and the cast did an absolutely phenomenal job.

I don't know how you could ever disrespect that hard work with the rude tweets that I'm seeing tonight. But I can't change the world, and I know that I'm in for a ton of those types of messages if I really go full steam ahead after my dreams of writing. And my wheelhouses are a strange mix, too... poetry, horror novels, crime novels... I have entertained the notion of writing a beauty book... I could always delve into the world of writing itself in a how-to nonfiction manner. People want a predictable branded type of persona, but the audience itself is not predictable and branded, nor would I want them to be. So I'd hope you don't want that from me, or from any other writer.

I hope that between now and next season's premiere, you find a way to appreciate that episode and ending. I hope that you too can get to a place where you say, "Now, that's entertainment." If you were sitting on the edge of your seat tonight, the writers did their job. If you weren't, you may be doing yourself a disservice. What do they tell you when they hand you your ticket at the movies? "Enjoy the show." And if you're not doing that, then you're wasting either your time or money, or both. We're only on this planet for a finite number of days. Don't be one of the critics. Enjoy every show. Find the good in every episode. Life is too short for griping about art.

Anyway, applause to all at The Walking Dead. I may or may not be in the majority here — time will tell — but I am one long-time zombie lover who really enjoyed every moment of what you presented on my television screen tonight.

I'll cap this off with my Walking Dead-related tweets and retweets from earlier, from oldest to newest:

Kelley Ann Hornyak
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Kelley Ann Hornyak

Kelley Ann Hornyak is a poet and author from Allen Park, Michigan. Her work centers on themes of love and loss, healing and acceptance. She has been featured in the literary journal Andwerve and is a past winner of The Christina Aguilera Poetry & Art Contest from DoSomething.org. Much of her poetic body of work can be read on her blog, PoetIconic.com, and her debut book, Poet Iconic, Vol. 1, can be 

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