WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
“The Walking Dead” season five premiered last night, and it was, in a word, intense. The AMC zombie series returned after several months away with one of its most pulse-pounding installments yet — less of an episode, and more of an action movie.
Lives were threatened, lives were lost, lives were saved — and all three of those categories owed some thanks to a woman who just might be the biggest (and most unlikely) badass on the show.
Related: Andrew Lincoln Previews The ‘Brutal’ Fifth Season Of “The Walking Dead”
The premiere, called “No Sanctuary,” provided some answers (“How will they get out of the train car?” “How will our heroes survive Terminus?” The answer to both is the same: Violently!), and it left us with some questions, too…
1. Is Carol The Show’s Best Character?
AMC
She’s certainly way up there. Carol started the series as a victim, and now, she’s a victimizer — and a hero. She lost her abusive husband and her beloved daughter. She lost some of her humanity, when she killed Tyreese’s girlfriend Karen to stop the spread of a lethal infection. She lost more of it when she chose to kill little Lizzie, growing deadlier and darker with each passing minute.
But along the way, Carol gained things: The will to survive, and ability to back it up with action. A veritable one-woman army, Carol did her best Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley impression as she tore through Terminus, providing her allies with the distractions they needed to escape.
Everyone’s alive, and it’s not because of Rick. It’s not because of Daryl. It’s not because of Michonne, or Abraham, or any other of the show’s likely badasses. It’s all because of Carol — the unsung hero of “The Walking Dead,” and quite possibly its best.
2. Did You See The Penguin?
FOX
The first victim of the death-by-baseball-bat-and-throat-slashing was Sam, the same survivor Rick and Carol encountered back in the season four episode “Indifference.” He didn’t die then, as Rick and Carol probably predicted. Instead, he lived long enough to suffer an even worse fate at Terminus.
He was such a minor character back then, and it’s been so long since we’ve seen him on the show, that maybe some viewers didn’t put together that the actor who plays Sam, Robin Lord Taylor, is the same actor who plays Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot on “Gotham.”
It makes you wonder how Cobblepot would talk his way out of Terminus. “I’ll do whatever you say! I’ll be your slave for life!” The Penguin would be awesome in the zombie apocalypse.
3. Do We Believe Tyreese?
AMC
While Carol was busy busting up Terminus, Tyreese was busy playing babysitter — not just for baby Judith, but for a trash-talking Termite who kept pushing Tyreese’s buttons.
The man gains the upper hand on Tyreese, threatening to kill Judith if Tyreese doesn’t voluntarily walk into a swarm of zombies. Tyreese complies, but he doesn’t die — he totally annihilates the walkers, skewering one like Sephiroth versus the Midgar Zolom.
Later, when reunited with the group, Tyreese says he went back inside the cabin and killed the Termite. But we never see him finish the job; we just see Tyreese punch the guy’s lights out, the scene ending without any definitive death. Is it possible that Tyreese held onto his humanity, and left the guy alive? Or should we believe him — is Tyreese officially a killer of men?
4. Do We Believe Eugene?
AMC
“I was part of a 10-person team at the human genome project to find weaponized diseases to fight weaponized diseased, to fight pathgenic microorganisms with pathogenic microorganisms; fire with fire,” Eugene tells his fellow survivors of the theory behind eliminating the zombie virus. “All things being equal, it sounds pretty badass.”
Eugene’s theory on how to stop the walkers — rolling up to Washington, D.C., tweaking some existing methodology and turning it loose on the flesh-eaters — is certainly an interesting one. But should we believe it?
Comics readers have reasons to scratch their heads, but the show has made enough deviations from the source material that perhaps it’s best to just go with the ride … for now.
Related: “The Walking Dead”: Norman Reedus Reveals Daryl Is “Dirtier” In Season 5
5. Where’s Beth?
AMC
The only series regular who didn’t appear in the premiere, Beth’s whereabouts remain unknown. Late in season five, Daryl was helpless to watch as Beth was driven off in a car, away from the zombie-filled funeral home. We haven’t seen her since then.
So what happened to Beth? Is she safe with some other group of survivors? Is she suffering a fate worse than the people who were trapped in Terminus? Hard to imagine that that’s even possible, right?
Then again, this is “The Walking Dead” — nothing but bad stuff happens. Wherever Beth is, and whatever’s happened to her, can’t be great.
6. Where’s Gareth?
AMC
Terminus is finished, thanks to Carol’s assault, and further wreckage from Rick and friends. But not all of the Termites are done for.
Andrew J. West, the actor who plays Gareth, is a series regular this season. Even though we don’t know how he survived, series regular status (and scenes from trailers) confirm that he’s far from finished with Rick and friends.
The question is, where is he? How does he survive the terror at Terminus, and where does he go next? The final scene of the episode made it clear that Gareth has risen from the ashes of disaster at least once before. Odds are good that he’ll do it again. After all — you’re either the butcher, or the cattle.
7. What Now?
AMC
Speaking of Gareth’s prophetic words, what’s next for the butchers and cattle that comprise Rick’s group? Where do they go now that Terminus has fallen, and now that they’re reunited for the first time since the Governor destroyed their own sanctuary? Is D.C. the next stop? Another rudimentary society? More walking through the woods? A ditch in the side of the road?
Wherever the Ricktator leads his people next, we’re on board. After an insane season premiere, there’s no reason to believe the remainder of season five will be any less crazy. It can only go sideways from here — just the way we like it.
What did you think of the “Walking Dead” premiere?
No Comments