Warning: there are spoilers for the season 4 finale of Walking Dead, which aired Sunday night, below. There are also mild speculative spoilers for the future direction of the show.
Sunday night’s season four finale of The Walking Dead scored huge in the ratings with 15.7 million viewers, a series high. The show is of course returning this October. As for the plot, it was a bit of a let-down for me. The most memorable scene was in the middle, when Rick, Micchone and Carl reunited with Darryl and killed the entire band of outlaw bandits. That was devastating and hard to watch. When the group reached Terminus and were too willing to set down their guns, I was disappointed. That whole scenario was unlike them, they were careful to sneak up on the compound, but they didn’t spend much time observing and just kind of came in and took everyone at their word. Then they somehow managed to avoid a single gunshot wound among four people despite being fired on for several minutes by automatic rifles. (Yes the group wanted to “spare” them for other purposes and allegedly fired at their feet, but I wasn’t buying it.)
At the end of the episode, Rick and his group were reunited with Maggie, Glenn, Sasha and Bob and their new group. They did so inside a storage container where they were all being held hostage. This begs the question: is this entire next season going to be a repeat of the season two snoozefest on Hershel’s farm? Instead of the farm, is the group going to be stuck at Terminus? Showrunner Robert Kirkman has sort-of said that’s not going to happen, and he’s also promised that we’ll soon know the fate of Carole, Tyrese and kidnapped Beth. Here’s what Kirkman told TVLine:
TVLINE | Are the citizens of Terminus cannibals?
[Laughs] There are a great many number of possibilities for that storyline and who those characters are and what they’re doing, and that is certainly one of them. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, but I can neither confirm nor deny anything at this time. Who the people of Terminus are and what their deal is will be dealt with fairly quickly when we come back for Season 5.TVLINE | Do you want us to be thinking that Carol and Tyreese could be in the Sloppy Joes that Mary served Rick & Co.?
[Laughs] It’s entirely possible. I’m stopping myself from making very horrible jokes. We’ll just have to see. It’s certainly fine for people to speculate.TVLINE | Why not give us a clue about their fate, especially coming off of last week’s harrowing episode?
Seeing that group in the train car and knowing that all of those people are together and that Rick is very capable and very prepared… We kind of felt like we needed more unknowns to keep people guessing. And leaving the fate of Beth and Carol and Tyreese and Judith completely ambiguous kind of gives us that. We’ll deal with [their whereabouts] fairly quickly when we come back for Season 5. They could be in another train car. They could be in part of the barbecue, as you say. Or, maybe, they found a Denny’s and they’re just having a good time.
There’s much more at TVLine if you’re interested, including the planning behind that awful scene in the middle, and more on the way that Rick’s character developed into the man we saw on the finale. Rick will do whatever it takes to protect his son, and we saw that in a dramatic way.
I’m just relieved that Terminus “will be dealt with fairly quickly,” and I hope that means our band of good guys will blaze the place up and get the hell out of there. I’m convinced that the Terminus people are cannibals, that seemed fairly obvious. There was a roaming band of cannibals in the comic series, but I barely remember them. If it takes more than three episodes for Rick and co to escape Terminus, I will be pissed. You know that I’ll keep watching though.
