Well Walking Dead fans, it finally happened. After months of speculation, anxiety, inner turmoil and an unprecedented amount of anticipation, the Walking Dead season 7 premiere finally aired, revealing that ever prevalent question on everyone’s mind “Who did Negan kill?” Now while I discussed in my last article why this was essentially a “no-win situation” for AMC, pulling a gimmick like this, I hoped that the premiere would live up to the hype delivering something both memorable and shocking. In my opinion, while portions of the episode were definitely more intense then episodes in recent memory, it did not deliver. *Warning, beyond this point are some minor spoilers regarding the episode, while I won’t reveal who died, I will discuss other spoiler filled elements of the episode*

While I won’t be going into who exactly got killed, out of courtesy for people reading this who aren’t entirely caught up on the show, I will say that the tactic they used was slightly annoying, giving the audience two deaths instead of one. While one character was initially killed by Negan, played by Jeffery Dean Morgan (after the now infamous game of “ennie-minney-miney-moe”), another was killed after Daryl (played by Norman Reedus), in shock and anger of Negan berating another character, strikes one of Negan’s men. While the decision to kill off two characters might seem like a pretty bold move, it just seems like another trick. Subverting audience expectations is generally a good thing, as it catches the “know-it-all” audience members off guard, and shocks everyone else who thought that things were settling down plot wise. However, it doesn’t help when the show, in the first 5 minutes, tells us how the death scene ends, with a small exchange between Rick and Negan. Negan starts off the show by saying “What, was the joke that bad?” and at no point after the first character goes down does Negan say this, which leads one to believe that the torture is nowhere near done (a.k.a. another one is about to bite the dust).

Maybe it’s because I knew from the source material who was going to die, or at the very least who one of the character was, I just felt like there weren’t any surprises, and the way they killed off the second character was pretty lame. It was because of someone else’s actions that this character got killed, not because Negan happened to land on them. The whole tragedy of this characters death is that it happens by pure luck and chance, it wasn’t deliberate at all on Negan’s behalf, and while the first character DID die by pure luck and chance, it lessened the impact of the second characters death by a mile. Now, the rest of the episode was just narrative filler, nothing beyond the shock of the deaths really happens. Sure, what goes down between Rick and Negan is more or less an establishment of “who’s in charge” in the new world order, but I think after the whole “trap the group like rats in a maze” and “I just killed two of your friends and can kill anyone you love at any given time” routine we just went through, I think that Rick would get the picture by now.

Of course, there were several other flaws with the episode. The first twenty minutes for example, didn’t start out with the reveal of who died, but rather moments between Rick (played by Andrew Lincoln) and Negan, with Rick in particular having (really corny) flashbacks of all the people in his group up until that point, only belaboring the point that someone (or more than one person) has just died and Rick can’t lose anyone else. Not to mention after the death scene is shown, and we return to the present, Rick has visions of everyone else getting “Lucilled” to death, which I’m sure was done to prevent anyone from figuring out who actually died in the episode (essentially, by filming death scenes for everyone, it would throw everyone off the scent). The final straw for me was the scene of everyone in the group at that point, all the main cast having a “Sunday Dinner” in formal attire in a vision by Rick of “what life could have been outside the apocalypse.” This was brought on by a line of Negan’s that is more or less “You thought you would all get together for a Sunday Dinner?” and while that line alone is more than enough to convey that everyone doesn’t get a happy ending, actually seeing the Sunday dinner was more “groan inducing” then “heartbreakingly tragic.”

Now, I wasn’t completely disappointed by the episode, and even though the whole episode was essentially Negan proving he’s top dog, there were some good moments. For example, the way the second character died was absolutely brutal, something that reflected the comic books quite nicely. Also, Jeffery Dean Morgan as Negan was absolutely perfect in this episode, and it was nice to see him in a majority of it after being shafted in the season finale to a 15 minute cameo. The end of the episode with him and Rick was actually shocking, that Negan would put Rick in the situation that he does was actually pretty horrifying, and caught me off guard. While it does seem a little out of character for Negan, given what we know about him in the comic books, it was a pretty intense scene nonetheless, and Andrew Lincoln and J.D.M. knocked it out of the park.

Overall, even though the episode did have some good moments, there was no reason for the show to have had its huge cliffhanger, and played it out the way it did. If they had less filler in the season 6 finale, and added the twenty minutes of death sequence from this episode, and ended it with the feeling of “what comes next” (similar to how season 5 ended) I don’t think anyone would have complained. If the actual premiere itself was a really, REALLY good episode, justifying the cliffhanger, I don’t think anyone would have complained. However, this episode, while decent, was not worth the wait, by any stretch of the imagination. Despite this however, now that we’ve gotten past this whole ugly ordeal, hopefully Negan (and soon to be introduced King Ezekiel) can breathe some new life into this show, and make it as horrifying and unpredictable as it often is. Just, for next season, let’s hope there aren’t any more gimmicks.