*Warning: this post contains spoilers*
Photo Courtesy of Tina Rataj-Berard
After The Walking Dead’s last season premiere in which fan favorite characters Glenn and Abraham were murdered gruesomely (even for this show) and a good portion of the audience was alienated, this season’s premiere went in a very different direction. Like the Season Six premiere, Season Eight’s “Mercy” started with Rick having a plan, this time to shake up Negan and the Saviors. Rick and co. bring in a hoard of walkers, explosives, synchronized watches, espionage, and more in order to hit Negan on his home turf in a very effective move. Everything seemed to go right, which on this show usually means that things will somehow go terribly wrong later in the season.
Photo Courtesy of AMC
Also significant, and something that fans of the show have been thinking about, tweeting about, theorizing about, is the strange sequence of an older Rick that we first got a glimpse of in the trailer for this season. We saw this old Rick wake up to what looks like a happy home with an older Judith, but a Michonne who looks exactly the same and a festival being planned in the unknown outside world that we get only a glimpse of. Seemingly linked with those scenes were also a few close up shots on a sweaty, red eyed Rick that were not a part of the main storyline and also not a part of the old Rick scenes. Towards the end of the episode this Rick says “Let mercy prevail over wrath.”
We still don’t know anything about what old Rick is up to, and now with this Rick in the mix I can only theorize, like hundreds of other fans, that Rick might not survive this final war against Negan.
Photo Courtesy of Madison Grooms
Time to strap in Walking Dead fans! This season is going to be one for the books!