‘The Walking Dead’ Ends Season 10 With An Asterisk

“We don’t always choose the endings we get” could be The Walking Dead‘s epigraph; but it’s especially applicable to Season 10, which wrapped up tonight with Episode 15, “The Tower.” One of the strongest seasons in years, TWD built on the ground set up by Season 9’s return to form to dive fully into the Whisperer War, a battle between our zombie apocalypse heroes and creepy, skin-mask wearing villains. It was exciting, emotional, epically filmed and acted — and thanks to a real life, non-zombie plague, abruptly finished one episode before the finale.

That final episode, “A Certain Doom,” will air later this year as a special, one-off event (no date has yet been set) thanks to post-production on the series being shut down because of the current coronavirus pandemic. Subsequent DVD box sets will most likely lump that episode (whenever it airs) into Season 10, as — presumably — will streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video. But as is, the final scene of “The Tower” will be the image we’re left with for the next few months.

And it’s a bit of a shame, because as good as many of the moments in this week’s episode were — plenty of tension, and I even teared up at least twice — it’s clearly just the setup for that delayed finale.

Spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 15 “The Tower” past this point.

The action of the episode is essentially split into two parts: one following a small group as they encounter apocalyptic pixie dream girl Princess (Paola Lázaro); and several fronts on the Whisperer War as Beta (Ryan Hurst) tries to track down the refugees from Alexandria and destroy them, once and for all.

Let’s start with Princess, who was briefly introduced in last week’s “Look at the Flowers” and is eerily prescient self-isolation goals. The multi-colored hair, outrageously dressed woman with a big ol’ gun has been living by herself for over a year, making live-action dioramas with the undead to amuse herself, when she meets up with Ezekiel (Khary Payton), Eugene (Josh McDermitt) and Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura); who are themselves on their way to meet the mysterious Stephanie (Margot Bingham), a woman who Eugene met over the radio and probably will usher the show into the Commonwealth storyline from the comics.

I say eerily prescient, because there’s no way The Walking Dead folks could have known how relatable Princess would be right now, when they filmed the show months earlier. But the plot, which has her take the group the long way around to find new wheels (turns out she means bicycles) after spooking their horses, mainly because she’s lonely and has had no human contact for months, is exactly how I’d venture a lot of the population of the world is feeling right about now. The main thrust of her arc is to A) make Yumiko trust her, which she does by the end when she invites Princess to tag along; and B) make Eugene relate to her, as he knows a thing or two about lying so people won’t leave him behind — recall that he pretended to be working on a zombie cure so Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Rosita (Christian Serratos) would protect him at all costs.

Ultimately, this part of the story is resolved: Princess is heading off with our group, and should be a major part of the Commonwealth story, if it happens. But knowing that this is the “final” episode of Season 10, spending this much time literally stuck in a minefield with this group (Princess takes them through one because she thinks she knows her way, but of course loses track halfway through) feels pointedly like a frustrating quagmire.

The bulk of the episode, though, is spent on Beta’s gathering of a massive herd of zombies as he tries to track down the Alexandrians. First, he heads to the empty town, but they’re gone other than Aaron (Ross Marquand) and Alden (Callan McAuliffe), who are hoping to lure him to Oceanside for some ultimately unfulfilled part of the plan to stop the Whisperers. Meanwhile, Daryl (Norman Reedus) is tricked into taking Judith (Cailey Fleming) on a scouting mission; Carol (Melissa McBride) and Kelly (Angel Theory) have a heart to heart; and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) tries to talk to Lydia (Cassady McClincy) about chopping her mom’s head off. And ultimately, thanks to a cat (???) who sort of talks to him (????), Beta figures out his prey are hiding in an abandoned hospital.

Other than being gobsmacked that The Walking Dead introduced a talking cat before Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, there’s plenty to like about all of these differing threads. Aaron and Alden keeping track of Beta is appropriately tense, particularly when they’re hiding in the Alexandria windmill, mere feet from where the hulking villain is standing. Judith admitting to Daryl that Michonne (Danai Gurira) isn’t coming back, and that she was scared to tell him because he might leave, too — followed by Daryl’s speech about he can’t promise something won’t happen to him, but he will be there for her until it does — certainly got me choked up, even if Judith neglected the pertinent info that Michonne left because Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) might be alive.

The Carol/Kelly heart to heart was similarly sweet and it got a little dusty in here, thanks to Kelly calling out that Carol is the person who goes off on her own and does only what she can do… After a season watching Carol be lost in a haze of vengeance after Alpha (Samantha Morton) killed her son, having this reminder of why Carol is one of the most beloved characters in the history of the show, and a legend the same way Kelly describes her, was a lovely, grounded moment. It was helped by McBride’s reliably beautiful reacting. Even without dialogue, you can see the sea change in Carol’s mood, the way she’s been holding her body tight for so long, relaxing, just an inch.

Even the Negan/Lydia conversation got to me, though it was far more complicated than the previous ones mentioned. Negan has always been a divisive character… I’ve written before about how the show’s push for his redemption is arguably misguided, and here Lydia lays out the same, basic argument, telling him that people wish he had died, along with her mother. But if there is one redeemable characteristic in Negan, it’s that he is kind to children. We saw that in his bond with Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs), and we see it here again when he offers to be Lydia’s confidant. There are the disturbing undertones to both, of course: with Carl, he thought he could be a better father than Rick; and with Lydia, he boned her mom a bunch and is sort of trying to act like her Dad. Negan’s wife died before they could have any kids — a detail hinted at in the show, but never fully addressed — so part of this is his attempt to create a pseudo family of his own. It’s a selfish urge, versus an altruistic one.

Yet still he does get through to Lydia, a girl who he tied up in a shack just a few episodes prior in order to stop her own mother from killing her (it was complicated). She didn’t get the closure she needed; but finds it, of a sort, sobbing and pounding on Negan’s chest. Time will tell whether she’s traded one messed up parental figure for another — I’d say “yes” — but for Negan, this is the redemption he’s been looking for, even if the rest of the group is far from accepting him.

The issue, again, is these are stand-out moments, a structural way of creating character bonds that will be inevitably blown apart once Beta’s attack reaches its fruition — something that won’t pay off for months down the road. This clearly isn’t the production company’s fault, the writers’ faults, AMC’s fault… It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way the cards were dealt, and for the safety of those concerned production was shut down before they could deliver a finale that would tie up these threads; undoubtedly the correct decision.

It’s only from a viewer perspective this is frustrating, because whatever happens on “A Certain Doom” will require holding on to the feeling of these bonds for far too long, particularly when we’re far more concerned about what will happen to the real people we know if the real pandemic happening outside all of our doors.

For my part, I’ll also note that The Walking Dead, since it’s been so good this season, has been a surprisingly calming point in the middle of this pandemic. That’s sort of the point of zombie fiction, of course. Nobody really thinks they’ll be in the first wave of the dead, one of the numbers of the herd that shuffles through a city hungering for human flesh. In our minds, we’re at the very least the people who survive to the middle — and the whole pitch of The Walking Dead is that it’s that next step after the zombie movie, the “what’s next.” There’s still the constant threat of death and horror everywhere, but part of the reason the franchise became so popular and has thrived for so long is that sense that even though doom lurks around every corner, we’ll pull through — at least for now. Even if we’re not the main characters, we’ll find our Daryl, our Rick, our Michonne; that leader who will keep us safe, like how Princess immediately hooks onto Eugene, Ezekiel and Yumiko. We’ll find that temporary safe haven, before it’s destroyed and we’re on to the next.

As someone who has watched hundreds of hours of The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, read the comics, played the games, and more, it’s that sense of comfort that’s been helping me through, even though it’s a fiction. For those moments when the growl of the walkers fades in the background and for a brief second two people can connect on a deep, spiritual level. It’s probably far too harsh to say that not getting to see the finale robbed me of more of those moments, that comfort. If anything, my heart aches for any sense of completion the season finale might have brought, where the good guys triumph over the bad guys, lose a few along the way but have more than enough to believe that even with this devastation, they can still, someday, fix the world.

Here’s hoping we can all make it through to see that finale and begin rebuilding, too.

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