Watching the end of this episode was like being stabbed through the gut.
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Staff Writer
The Walking Dead: “The Obliged”
Season 9, Episode 4
Airdate: 10/28/2018
***SPOILERS INCOMING***
After months of speculation, we finally have a clear picture of what the end of Rick Grimes’ tenure on The Walking Dead looks like — it’s rather bloody and grim.
In a poetic callback to the show’s pilot episode, Rick was thrown from his horse. Only this time, things are much direr: there is no tank for him to climb into, and there is no resourceful pizza delivery boy coming to save him.
Rick is impaled by a large metal rod sticking out from the rubble. He’s lost consciousness, bleeding out from the wound, and stuck on the rod as two giant herds of walkers are yards away from closing in on him.
Whoa.
Even if we all know that this injury will ultimately lead to Rick’s departure, this was truly one of the more fantastic cliffhangers that the show has ever done, especially for a show that hasn’t done well with cliffhangers in the past.
The question we’ve been asking for months now is finally about to be answered: does Rick Grimes make it out of this show alive? The promo for next week’s landmark episode suggests that Rick is going to be hallucinating pretty heavily and that we’re about to take a walk down memory lane as a result of that. It’s entirely possible that Rick is hallucinating as he’s being torn to bits, but I don’t think that’s the case. Perhaps Rick ultimately lives, although he’s going to be in bad shape for a long, long time.
Again, to explain why I think that, I have to return to the promo. There is an image of a city skyline behind what looks like present-day Rick as he appears to be in a hospital in Atlanta. While it’s entirely possible that it’s only a part of a hallucination, nothing about the image adds up. The hospital Rick was in at the start of the pilot wasn’t in Atlanta… it was in his hometown of King County, Georgia; that’s not the Atlanta skyline — thanks to some investigating (kudos, Reddit,) it appears that skyline belongs to the city of Charlotte, North Carolina.
How could Rick be in North Carolina of all places? There is only one explanation I can come up with: the helicopter. I think we might have just figured out where that group is based.
Did the graphics team on the show royally screw up, or did we find out what actually happens to Rick? We’ll find out next Sunday night, when everything changes for good and an era officially ends.
SCATTERED THOUGHTS:
– I understand AMC wants to promote these episodes as being the final ones featuring Rick Grimes, even if many critics don’t. However, if my prediction about his fate is correct, that’s a pretty big thing to put in a promo. Maybe they should have left that part out.
– There was a bunch of other things happening this week and none of them were unwatchable. I’m truly stunned to see several well-written episodes in a row. It seems like the show has found its groove again, at least for the time being.
– It is a shame, though, that the ratings for the show aren’t reflecting the quality. This is still AMC’s number one show in terms of ratings, but the number of viewers each week has dropped drastically. The last two seasons were a chore to get through at times and, truthfully, some of those viewers stopped watching and will not come back. It’s a shame because what we are getting now is a show worth watching.
– While it wasn’t the strongest part of the episode by a long shot, I really enjoyed the interactions between Michonne and Negan. It’s nice to see Negan in such a vulnerable emotional state after putting these people through hell these past few seasons. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is performing fantastically in the role right now.
– I don’t believe for a second Michonne was telling the truth about leaving Negan’s old bat Lucille out on the battlefield. We haven’t seen the last of that thing.
– Maggie didn’t make it to Alexandria in this episode, but she will make it there next week. Can’t wait to see what happens there because, from a sneak peek of the released episode, it doesn’t look like she’ll back down from trying to kill Negan.
– Daryl dropped an F-Bomb while trying to talk some sense into Rick. Cable television is cool.
– Jadis and Father Gabriel’s freaky trash stuff didn’t amount to much, but as I stated above, I think we’re finally going to know what’s going on with that helicopter next week. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Jadis, either.
– I genuinely laughed my butt off when Jed the Savior called Carol a “weak, little woman.” I guess no one told him that she once took down a compound of cannibals completely by herself.
– I guess we’ll find out the results of the Savior-led shootout next week. I’m about 99.99% that Carol’s team wins.
– I will never forgive Scott Gimple for allowing Carl Grimes to be killed off. I was never a fan of the character, but there is no reason for that to have happened other than because AMC didn’t want to pay Chandler Riggs like an adult. With Rick’s imminent end, Carl’s death makes that decision even worse in retrospect.
– I know he’s on Fear The Walking Dead now, but I really hope we see Lennie James as Morgan Jones next week during one of Rick’s hallucinations. He was there at the beginning of Rick’s story, and he should be there at the end one way or the other.
