‘The Walking Dead’: What to Know for Season 6 Midseason Premiere
Even the hardest of hardcore Walking Dead fans would probably admit that after a rip-roaring start to the sixth season last fall, the story stalled a little. The past eight episodes have covered the same few bloody days from multiple perspectives, as our scattered heroes executed a botched plan to secure their new home in northern Virginia’s “Alexandria Safe Zone.” Give credit to the show’s writers for trying something different, making all the usual zombie attacks and violent infighting feel fresh by focusing on just a few characters per hour, and jumping around in the timeline. But the result, ultimately, was two months of only intermittently exciting post-apocalyptic action, while the plot spun around in circles.
Still, there was some advancement though last year. So as The Walking Dead prepares to resume its sixth season this Sunday night, here’s a refresher on where we left everybody — and where they may be headed over the next several weeks.
1. The Alexandria Safe Zone has been overrun with walkers
Season Six jumped right into the action with a scene of scruffy lawman Rick Grimes leading a select group of Alexandrians on a mission to herd an overflowing pit of zombies out of their hole and into the hinterlands. But the scheme quickly went awry, and soon a massive wave of the undead crashed into the community’s walls. In the midseason finale, a breech in the barricades allowed the monsters to started streaming in, trapping Rick and his friends in a house, with no obvious means of escape. As a last ditch effort to get to safety, the humans smeared their clothes with walker-guts, hoping to blend in quietly with the ravenous throng. And in the episode’s last scene, just as it looked like everyone was going to make it through the gauntlet alive, the youngest of their party — skittish pre-teen Sam Anderson — panicked.
In a purely practical sense, the present crisis allows the show’s producers to winnow the cast a bit, to make way for new characters soon to arrive. Already, the invasion has cost Alexandria its visionary founder, Deanna, who was killed at the end of the last episode. And without giving too much away, Sunday’s premiere definitely doesn’t let up on the carnage. What remains to be seen is whether Rick can reestablish his authority over this group of people whom he’s just brought to the brink of disaster.
2. Morgan’s kindness appears to be backfiring
The sixth season episode “Here’s Not Here” told the alternately devastating and inspiring story of how Morgan Jones went from being a remorseless killing machine to becoming a man who doesn’t believe in taking a life unless absolutely necessary. Throughout this stretch of the show, Morgan’s gentle approach to survival has put him at odds with the more pragmatic Rick and the more bloodthirsty Carol — especially when a member of a nihilistic ravagers known as “The Wolves” escaped from our zen master’s makeshift prison, taking Alexandria’s only trained doctor as a hostage.
The Walking Dead‘s big thematic driver of late has been the ongoing contrast between different ways of living, and the urgent debate over whether they can reasonably co-exist. Rick and Carol have been ruthlessly Darwinian, forcing their new neighbors to get with the program or risk becoming zombie-food. The Wolves though are more viciously self-serving than any tribe our heroes have yet seen, representing a test of Morgan’s faith in humanity’s future. We’re curious to see how this ends.