Walking Dead season 11 part 2 review: When life is scarier than Reapers

The Walking DeadThe season 11B premieres with an explosion when survivors launch fireworks onto a crowd approaching walkers. In the middle of all the explosions, the conflict between Maggie (Lauren Cohan), a tough woman, and the Reapers is violent, bloody and grim. The characters are now on their eleventh season. The Walking DeadThey are experienced fighters. However, the last season’s challenge for our weary survivors has proven to be more perilous: living. A society.

Fans of the series, and the graphic novels it’s based on, have known for a while that there will never be a “cure” for the zombie virus in the fictional world of The Walking Dead. However, an apocalypse could end in any other way. The final season seems to be heading towards this conclusion in a surprising manner. It is history that repeats itself. Anarchy becomes replaced with dead-end work.

More and more of the long-running AMC series’ survivors have moved and gotten acclimated to The Commonwealth, and it becomes clear in the midpoint of the last season that the show’s Final Boss is a return to normalcy. It feels like the show’s natural ending. The Walking Dead It is the end of the world, so we must strive to make it better. Is the end of the end of the world not … the start of the world? And given everything they’ve been through, should it be?

COVID-19 has left only a few episodes from season 10, and the majority of the season 11 have stayed with small two-handers, while avoiding big fights. The show’s ensemble glory is now back. These episodes didn’t feel out of place, or even valuable. What has kept me going is my interpersonal relationships with others and the quiet moments. The Walking DeadIn spite of all the years, it still ticks. It’s always been more about the living than the dead. The series will spend an hour on zombie gore and brutal fight scenes and then end on the most wholesome hug you’ve ever seen between two friends who are reuniting after time apart.

Much of the season’s arc looks to be ground that we’ve trod before on this show. The second half of season two (a long one) shows new rivalries between characters we love. It’s a possible dystopia that Carol must dismantle. The same thing as ever.

But returning to familiar situations while still introducing new characters isn’t the worst place for a show to be in its final season, more than a decade later. It’s good to create bookends and reminds us why we started watching The Walking DeadIn the first place. It’s satisfying to see these characters take what they’ve learned and not repeat mistakes they’ve made in the past. This makes the Commonwealth feel more like the last exam in a 13 year class.

This troupe is facing new stakes than ever before. We’ve seen the survivors go from the woods to running water before at the CDC and in Alexandria. We’ve seen communities with dangerous distributions of power and leadership with The Governor and Negan. But we’ve yet to see these characters readjust to things like dress codes, journalism, money, the service industry, and a socioeconomic class structure. The problems they’re facing in the final season are more like the problems they faced in the before times. The main threat in the Commonwealth comes not from cult worship or cannibalism, but from a worker’s rights rebellion. It’s not so much terrifying as deeply depressing.

The escape from mundane is one of the main reasons why zombie apocalypses or the end of all the world is beloved. The oppressive structures of our modern society. It’s easy to imagine what kind of person we would be if we didn’t have jobs to go to and bills to pay. It’s an equalizer. The jerk who cut you in line or didn’t leave a tip would get eaten first. That’s the fantasy, right?

Photo: Josh Stringer/AMC

Photo: Josh Stringer/AMC

Photo: Josh Stringer/AMC

It will all come to an end. The Walking Dead has figured out, those types of people and situations will come back; that’s the price to pay for safely and complacency. You can afford to be rude when you’re not fighting to survive. Sebastian Milton is the entitled, priviledged product of nepotism and his primary antagonist in Season 11B. Pamela Milton, his mother is an ex-politician who appears determined to preserve the world which has benefited her. These are the kind of people one might think would lack the willpower to survive an apocalypse. Yet, they seem determined to lead our surviving survivors. Pamela’s power comes from a reactionary place of familiarity and comfort, and that’s not always a good thing.

Consider the children, as an example. The Walking Dead has been on the air (and jumped ahead in time) for so long that we’ve watched multiple children grow up in the zombie apocalypse. They’ve been deprived of what we consider to be a “normal childhood” and had to grow up very fast with all of the violence and death that surrounds them. But when Daryl can’t afford to give Judith Grimes an allowance when she asks for one, it’s a reminder that so-called normal childhood has its bummers too.

Does it make sense to try and rebuild the society as it was, with all its flaws? The same question was raised in a post-apocalyptic television series. Station Eleven. That series’ antagonist (for lack of a better term) rejected efforts to bring back society as it was. These themes tie the series together. Station ElevenYou could say something like The Walking Dead’s final arcs, especially as we the audience are dipping back in and out of society in the waning days of a global trauma that could have easily ended the world.

The pandemic in our country has revealed priorities and made us feel both happy and sad. The Walking DeadIt is well-positioned to make use of its last season to deal with this in a unique, but not too obvious, way.