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I thought it was a solid episode. Not my favourite of the season, but one of the better ones. Some people absolutely love it and they're already calling it a top five episode and some care calling it better than The Grove, and I really disagree with that. The Grove is one of the most definitive episodes of The Walking Dead.
Only two episodes left...and what a pair of episodes it's going to be!
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It is hard to pick a best episode so far this season. Been some really good ones. Episode 3, 5, 8, 12, 13, 14 have all been really strong entries.
The next two episodes will probably be the best of the season....
I think it's interesting in how both the comics and the show have The Fair, but it exists for two entirely different purposes. In the comics the fair takes place outside the walls in Alexandria and is there to not only celebrate what they communities have built, but also to make the point to everyone in how safe they've made the world that they can be outside the walls and not be afraid. A big point of the comics is how the communities all work together to patrol roads and kill walkers so their area is relatively free of the dead.
In the show the communities are divided and The Fair is about reestablishing relations and the communities being strong together than separately. It's about celebration of progress too, but progress after a regression. It's inside the walls of The Kingdom so this world isn't as safe as it is in the comics.
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I'd avoid anything TWD related for the next week. Probably mad spoilers and YouTubers aren't even hiding what goes down, which is a shame. It would suck to not know and get even get a sense of what goes down just be browsing youtube. I've been very careful on here not to reveal anything...I didn't even want to mention The Whisperers until we'd seen them on the show.
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Sunday can't come soon enough. The sauce is perfect. It's time to feast!
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I went into the episode knowing where it was going because I read the comics. That being said, the characters chosen in the comics were MUCH more likeable than the ones chosen in the tv show.
I am mixed on the death choices. None were as impactful as in the comics, especially since so many of these characters were new. Enid, Tara, and Henry were the only characters who have been around longer than this season. But at the same time Hilltop took the heaviest losses (Tammy Rose, the two kids, Enid, and their new leader, Tara) so they're going to be incredibly angry, I think. Maggie left, and then Jesus was killed by The Whisperers, and then Tara took over and was also killed by The Whisperers. I think Hilltop is going to have major unrest, especially without a leader. Is Daryl going to take over that? Will Maggie return just in time to take charge after everything crumbled in her absence?
The only two Alexandrians killed were former Saviors, one being one of Negan's wives. No one from Magna's Group died unlike them losing two in the comics. There were more heads in the comics and arguably two bigger deaths. But I did notice one thing: Tammy Rose was the only character who was piked in the comics who also died here, but the rest of the characters were show original characters.
I want to highlight the great storytelling behind Henry's arc in the new beginning. We first meet grown up Henry fixing the pipes at The Kingdom, which he uses to explain why he wants to go to The Hilltop to learn how to blacksmith and fix stuff to contribute to The Kingdom in the future...this is how he got wrapped up with Lydia and set all those things into motion, and it was those pipes which separated him from Lydia and get him killed by Alpha. Angela Kang gets how to do those little things so well, which is why I was so excited when she was named showrunner.
I also bet The Highwaymen regret ever trying to hustle The Kingdom down. Poor Ozzy never got to see a movie :'(
What I'm most excited for though is how Henry's death is going to drive Carol. How much can this poor woman take? I think it would be too easy for Carol to go full on warpath. It's interesting that Rosita seemed to be set up to die because her death would affect Gabriel, Eugene, and Siddiq, plus she was pregnant, but instead we got Henry's death, which really impacts Carol and Ezekiel, along with Lydia, not to mention the bond he was beginning to form with Daryl and Daryl's bond with Carol, would be enough to devestate Carol.
In many ways, The Whisperers struck a blow to 'the future' in killing so many young people, the first new group they'd welcomed into the fold. They also killed the adopted son of two leaders, and the leader of another community. And I think we can't discount the relationship between Maggie and Enid for when Maggie returns in Season 10. All in all I think the deaths were good choices in terms of driving the narrative going forward. None were really expected. They killed off a few long-time characters. And I can see why they took a bit of a safer road...they killed Carl last season and had to write off Rick and Maggie. I think they chose well.
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I didn't really care for Alpha at all, but she's got my attention now. I was really sadden to see several of the characters go.
You don't know my kind.....You don't my mind.....Dark necessities are part of my design.....
This was AMAZING. You said more died in the comics? How many?
Also, why do you think Maggie is coming back?
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You don't know my kind.....You don't my mind.....Dark necessities are part of my design.....
I'll put comics spoilers regarding the pikes in the spoiler tags just because I know some people haven't read this far yet.
But yeah, Carol died at the Prison a long time ago. Her character in the comics wasn't very good, but her death was pretty cool. Sophia is still alive in the comics, but her and Carl never became an item, though they are good friends. Enid was actually taking over the Sophia role in the comics, who becomes the adopted daughter of Maggie and Glenn. Enid and Carl were friends and she was also very close with Maggie, but she was too old to be a daughter figure to Maggie. I think in the comics though Sophia had feelings for Carl for a long time and there has been some displays of jealousy between Lydia and Sophia in the comics. It's funny that the actors who played Henry in the show, young and older, were both the younger brothers of the actress who played Sophia, and all were Carol's child, real and adopted, and Carol had to see both of them zombiefied. Yet in the comics it is Sophia who keeps losing parents.
Spoiler:
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First of all, does anyone else have DirectTV and have a problem with recorded shows being cut off before they end? For some reason our DVR only recorded 60 minutes of the show instead of the full 125 minutes. It got up to the part where Alpha sat down next to Lydia in the theater, they went to commercial and it just stopped. We had to download it from on-demand to finish watching it.
Second, a question about the plot line of the latest episode. Maybe they explained it better in the comics, but how in the hell did the Whisperers manage to get that many people out of the movie theater or even the Kingdom in general in the first place? They never really showed or explained that part at all.
They just sort of went from Lydia saying she would scream to alert the others to everyone wondering where the missing people went.
Hearts are tough, she said, most times hearts don't break, and I'm sure that's right . . . but what about then? What about who we were then? What about hearts in Atlantis?
Most of the pike victims in the comics are new characters too, that only came in after New Beginning, like most of these characters did on the show. Come to think of it, the show had more noteable names among the victims than the comics, but their impact was still a little less.
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Alpha was snatching up people who wandered off alone, like Henry who left to go fix the pipes. She had snatched everyone up before the movie started, which is why it was daylight when people were wondering where people went. In the comics it's not explained at all...in fact, it's explained less. We know Alpha is there at the fair, but her interaction is fairly limited, and we don't see the victims after they're taken. It's assumed Alpha managed to lure people away and she murdered them. She is said to have killed each of them in the comics, so I think most comics readers just assumed she quickly beheaded them all with her machete. Like I said in a recent post in the thread, the fair in the comics is outside Alexandria and outside the walls, so it would've been easier for Alpha to lure someone out of sight and murder them...I assume there was some bushy area with a pile of bodies and a bloody machete waiting for victims in the comics. In the show, I can only assume there were whisperers all around The Kingdom and she knocked them out and delivered them to her people...how, I'm not sure. Some vulnerability somewhere, I imagine. But at least in the show she wasn't alone with it, as she is shown to have been in the comics. Also, there could've have been a dozen whisperers who infiltrated the fair for all we know. We haven't seen the rest of them unmasked before.
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I can but this is the first time it happened. 99 times out of 100 all of our shows record just fine. More often we've had the problem of the show not getting recorded because it lost the signal due to a heavy rainstorm. But even those occurrences are pretty rare.
I can usually find the show either on demand, record a later showing or stream it from the network's website.
Hearts are tough, she said, most times hearts don't break, and I'm sure that's right . . . but what about then? What about who we were then? What about hearts in Atlantis?
I'm excited for Sunday. The look the finale looks great. Hoping we get more than one winter episode of The Walking Dead, but I don't know if they could make one in May down in Georgia. I'm going to savour it though if it's just one.
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