!!!!!!WARNING SEASON 2 AND 3 SPOILERS!!!!!!
CLICK LINK TO VIEW
Ever since The Walking Dead’s excellent mid
season finale, the show has been slowly building up to an earth shattering
finish, hours of careful plotting to what we all expected to be an earth
shattering climax. After all, why would episodes 8 through 15 be so slow,
almost to the point of tedium? In what is an utter letdown, Welcome to the
Tombs is the worst episode of season 3 so far, a lifeless whimper to a season
that required a ferocious bang.
With Rick and the group planning on
abandoning the prison in anticipation of The Governors assault, things are
looking incredibly dire for our protagonists. In the camp of Woodbury the mood
is vehemently aggressive, The Governor rallying his troops to prepare them for
the impending battle. While the 2 sides gear up to war, Andrea is bound and
locked in a room with a severely injured Milton who is dying from The Governors
stab wounds, her small amount of screentime is impressively cut between the
episodes more pressing matter.
But like much of the episode, Ricks retreat
is something of a ruse, to us and the opposing force, the attack on the prison
is flipped as Glenn and Maggie ambush the aggressors and drive them out. The ridiculousness
of this scene is a problem that has been a regular occurrence in human vs.
human battles on the show in that no one ever seems to hit their targets. Despite
opening up on over a dozen Woodbury citizens all in a relatively tight space,
nobody dies. This anticlimactic moment aptly sums up the episode on the whole;
very little payoff for a great deal of build-up.
Elsewhere, Tyrese and Sascha are quickly
swapped back to the good side quickly; there stay in Woodbury is made to look
even flimsier than it already was. The character is a big character in the
comics, but much like Michonne he is so far lacking in the translation to the
screen. Other than the brief exchange of bullets with Ricks dull Woodbury counter
attack, he does very little which sums up the action scenes nicely. Very little.
The Walking Dead is more than capable of delivering some ace setpieces and gun
battles, elements that are almost absent in this flat finale. Beyond Carls
execution of a fleeing Woodbury soldier, the Governor shows his true colours by
massacring his remaining warriors after the prison attack is repelled,
mindlessly slaughtering scores of innocent people. He and Martinez drive off
into the distance; this excellent villain is going to return sometime in the
future of the show, quite possibly the only smart move the episode actually
makes.
Hell, the only real character deaths we get
are Milton and everyone's most hated waste of space, Andrea. Milton is an
interesting character due to knowing The Governor before the outbreak, but his
backstory is never developed upon, making him another character to end up as
little more than cannon fodder. Andrea’s death is an oddly satisfying moment,
only because of how truly awful of a character she is. The attempt to make her
death emotional is a laughable decision; did anyone actually care about this
mess in the slightest?
The 3 things that were required from this
episode was to conclude the Woodbury story arc, deal with the governor (keeping
or killing him, either would’ve been satisfactory) and give some payoff in the
form of blistering action. It’s utterly devastating that only one of these
topics was actually addressed. The result is a poor episode and an even worse
season finale, a failure that makes the wait till Octobers season 4 seem excruciating
at best, and utterly pointless at worst. A sour ending to a good season.
4
No comments:
Post a Comment