The Walking Dead season 10 is TWD that fans deserve
By Sonya Iryna
The Walking Dead starts a new era but manages to retain the heart that made fans love the show from the start.
Season 9 of The Walking Dead brought lots of changes with it. Angela Kang took over as showrunner. Andrew Lincoln left the series. It was a time of huge upheaval as the show found a new narrative path. Despite the challenges, it was a solid season — if not a game-changing one.
Season 10 of The Walking Dead will also have a major challenge when Danai Gurira exits the show, but judging by The Walking Dead season 10 premiere, “Lines We Cross,” the series will handle that exit with the right amount of nostalgia, emotion, and narrative advancement.
Based on the season 10 premiere, it seems that the show has found exactly the right balance of emotional callbacks to the stories and characters that have brought the story this far, while building a really exciting arc for the impending Whisperer War. Alpha, played by Samantha Morton, is the kind of out-of-the-box villain the characters needed to find their new footing without Rick Grimes around.
The main conflict in The Walking Dead is once again between life and death, not just a battle for supplies with whatever jumped-up thug wants to take control. The scale of this battle with the Whisperers is huge, and that raises the stakes immensely. The action is epic, the relationships between characters are strong, and the look has gotten a major upgrade. This is The Walking Dead that fans deserve: a Walking Dead for the next 10 years that pays homage to the first 10 but drives the struggle for survival into unchartered territory.
The heart of The Walking Dead
The heart of The Walking Dead has always been the relationships between the survivors. From the minute that Rick met Morgan it’s always been about the relationships that form, break, and reform when those relationships are essential for survival. Many fans were afraid that, without Rick, that heart would disappear. It didn’t.
During most of season 9, the survivors were at odds with each other and cut off from each other. And the communities started to fail. Now the communities and the survivors are united — united as one in the fight to survive, and that’s always when The Walking Dead is at its absolute best.
The communities are back together, and those friendships and relationships are strong again, which is something fans needed after the loss of Rick last year. Be prepared for some very emotional Grimes family moments, along with some sweet vignettes with Rosita’s baby Coco and her multiple caregivers.
In the season premiere, “Lines We Cross,” all of the communities are together at Oceanside training to fight the Whisperers. And they have clearly spent a lot of time training. They are magnificent fighting as one phalanx against walkers as they drill and drill to make their skills better and their formations tighter. Seeing them all fighting together has an electricity that was absent during season 9. They’re ready to face Alpha and her army of death, no matter how massive that army is.
Alpha and The Whisperers
One of the most intriguing things about Alpha is her unique view of the world and how that colors her decisions. It’s difficult for the survivors to predict her movements because they don’t understand her thought process. It was pretty easy to predict what Negan would do, or the Governor. Alpha is an entirely different kind of creature.
She and the other Whisperers unsettle the survivors. They’re spooked because they cannot easily tell if walkers are actually dead or Whisperers in skin suits. The Whisperers are a pervasive and all encompassing threat. In season 9 the survivors were taken aback by that threat, but in season 10 they are coming out swinging against Alpha and her army.
For now they are wary of crossing her borders but they’re getting ready for war. And war is most definitely coming. There will be conflict now, because now Alpha has something to prove. There’s a very important moment at the end of episode that is perfectly played and chill-inducing.
10 years of The Walking Dead
It’s kind of hard to believe that The Walking Dead is now entering its 10th season. The story may have shifted as beloved characters have left the show, some by choice and some not, but with Season 10, the show returns to the narrative that made fans love it from the start: the ability of ordinary people to do extraordinary things, overcome massive obstacles, and defeat death itself armed with the power of humanity and their loyalty to and love for each other.
Next. 5 things we want from The Walking Dead season 10. dark