The Walking Dead season 9 premiere review: Is this New Beginning really any better?
The Walking Dead premiere picks up a year and a half after Negan was taken down from power. While Negan doesn’t appear in the episode, his presence is felt everywhere.gsz
Rick is basking in the serenity of not having to worry ever since he imprisoned the wicked witch of the Walker West better known as Negan. Alexandria is prospering nicely with solar powered energy and grounds that are well kept with supplies and food. Judith can paint pictures of Carl and his eyepatch and of Rick’s belly and grumpy face on the porch. Michonne, Rick, and Judith can take long walks in the open fields even with the gloomy crows foreshadowing that something dark is to come. And most importantly, no one is threatening the lives of the residents.
All the other communities seem to be busy running their operations too. Daryl is the head of the Sanctuary and has a motorcycle mechanic area, as well as Saviors producing corn fuel to run their automobiles. Even so, the Sanctuary is low on food and Daryl puts out a call through walkie-talkie to the other groups to meet up at the rally point to gather the communities for a road trip to Washington D.C.
The road trip is a genius plan to take supplies from a museum that has artifacts from a more primitive time. They’re gathering a wagon, plow, canoe, and bunches of seeds that were kept in the Museum’s displays. This whole plan is thanks to Jadis, who now goes by the name of Anne. She had visited the museum when she was a teacher and knew what supplies they could use. Anne has come a long way from being the devious leader of the garbage people. She no longer speaks in broken sentences, isn’t awkward around people, and seems to have blended in with her new family.
But if we’ve learned anything at all, we know that nothing ever runs smoothly. The front of the museum entrance has glass floors and beneath the fragile landing are tons of walkers. Rick gives everyone their orders on what to get from the upstairs museum floors, and before they ascend the stairs, a walker runs right through a brittle barrier from above them and lands right on the glass floor. Clearly, the glass is now compromised. And of course, one of the supplies on the list is a blasted wagon that probably weighs more than a dozen cars.
Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, Danai Gurira as Michonne, Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Khary Payton as Ezekiel, Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier – The Walking Dead _ Season 9, Episode 1 – Photo Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/AMC
Somehow, Rick gets the wagon and canoe across the glass that has started to crack under pressure. But Ezekiel ends up falling right through the floor while trying to push out the plow. He’s saved by the rope that was tied around his waist, which Rick and the others pull until he’s out of danger. He almost didn’t make it when a walker almost took a bite of his ankle, but lucky for him Daryl got the biter right in the head with an arrow.
King Ezekiel walks out from death’s grasp and right into Carol’s arms and into the liplock of the year. It seems that in the time that has passed Carol has warmed up to the King and has let down her guard a little. It’s a sad development for those that were shipping Carol and Daryl. However, I don’t see it as unfair because I’ve always seen Carol as a woman in the middle of a love triangle with romantic attachments to Ezekiel, Daryl, and Morgan. It could have gone in any direction for me.
As is known to happen in The Walking Dead, the glass museum floor was the least of their worries. When they reach the bridge heading back home, they find that it is entirely knocked out. Rick sets up a Plan B solution but apparently, there is a significant presence of hordes in all directions, and the alternate route ends up being more of a last resort.
While the audience would be smart to notice that the hordes mentioned may signify the rumored Whisperers are around, Rick and the clan are not suspicious. Since hordes have become as ubiquitous as the crows this season, there’s no reason to suspect danger in the form of humans pretending to be walkers. What I can’t understand is why no one puts much thought into the bridge being destroyed hours after they use it. There has to be some sort of foul play there.
The alternate route ends up being a muddy mess, and the wagon they just scored gets stuck. There’s another plan on getting the wagon out, but as the group is heaving the carriage forward, stray walkers appear. Rick ends up having to abandon the wagon he worked so hard for and the horses to boot. While single walkers no longer pose a threat to them, the walkers achieve strength in numbers. The hordes in number, size, and frequency have become a new recurring threat.
A young hilltop resident by the name of Ken who took care of the animals goes back to cut the horses free to save them and ends up getting bitten by a walker. Siddiq, who is skilled in medicine, tries to save the boy’s life but he doesn’t make it. That young boy becomes the biggest problem that Maggie has dealt with at Hilltop yet.
Maggie tells Ken’s parents, Tammy Rose and Earl, that he died on the run trying to save the horses. Understandably, the grieving parents are beyond consolation, but Tammy directs her anger at Maggie. Not because she didn’t understand that Maggie really had nothing to do with Ken’s death, but because Tammy boiled down the injustices of the world to Maggie’s direction as leader of Hilltop.
Hilltop’s prosperity is abundant, and that’s why Negan had the little colony under his thumb. Since the Kingdom, Alexandria, Hilltop, and the Sanctuary have become a group organization, a lot of the runs are meant to benefit the weakest of them all, the Saviors who are the ones lacking. Tammy implies that her son died getting supplies for the Sanctuary as if the pain would have been any less if he had died to help Hilltop directly.
And you can forget about the fact that the efforts they do as a group is meant to help them all because Tammy Rose is speaking from grief and not from a place of logic. Tammy’s premise being that Maggie doesn’t have Hilltop’s best interest in mind and is instead following Rick’s orders. She brings it all home by telling Maggie that her son, Hershel, has no father. In other words, Negan killed Glenn and there is still no justice there either.