Walking Dead Season 11 Part 2 Review: When Life Is Scarier Than Reapers

the Walking Dead Season 11B begins with a literal bang as a group of survivors send firecrackers into a horde of oncoming strays. The conflict between a hardened Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and the Reapers that unfolds amidst the explosions is gory, grim, and advanced in terms of hand-to-hand combat. After 11 seasons, the characters move on the Walking Dead are experienced fighters. But the challenge our weary survivors will face in the final season has turned out to be far more insidious: to live in a society.

Fans of the series and the graphic novels based on it have known for some time that there will never be a “cure” for the zombie virus in the fictional world of the Walking Dead. But an apocalypse can end in other ways, and the way the final season approaches that ending is unexpectedly disturbing. History repeats itself and anarchy is replaced by dead end jobs.

More and more survivors of the long-running AMC series have moved and settled into The Commonwealth, and by the middle of the final season it’s clear that the series’ final boss is a return to normalcy. This feels like a natural endgame the Walking Dead to strive for when it wears off. Isn’t the end of the end of the world… the beginning of the world? And after everything they’ve been through, should it be like this?

After COVID-19 precautions left Season 10 with a handful of episodes and the first part of Season 11 bogged down with intimate two-handed play while shying away from big battles, the show has returned to its full ensemble glory. These episodes didn’t feel out of place or priceless at all. Interpersonal relationships and quiet moments have remained the Walking Dead ticking after all these years. It was always more about the living than the dead. The series will spend an hour of zombie blood and brutal fight scenes, then end with the most comforting hug you’ve ever seen between two friends who reunite after a while.

Much of the season’s arc seems to be on the ground we’ve previously trodden on this show. In the first two episodes of the second part of the final season (One Sip), we see new rivalries emerge between beloved characters, a potential dystopia to be dismantled after her dark secrets are revealed, Carol carrying a plate of freshly baked cookies swings, and even another time warp. As it always was.

But returning to familiar situations while introducing new characters isn’t the worst place for a show to be in its final season more than a decade later. It’s good to create bookends and reminds us why we started watching the Walking Dead first of all. It’s gratifying to see these characters take what they’ve learned and not repeat mistakes they’ve made in the past. In this way, the Commonwealth feels more like the final exam after a 13-year class.

And, of course, the missions for this force are very different than ever before. We’ve seen the survivors come out of the forest to running water before at the CDC and in Alexandria. We’ve seen communities of dangerous power and leadership with The Governor and Negan. But we have yet to see how these characters adapt to things like dress codes, journalism, money, the service industry, and a socio-economic class structure. The problems they are facing in the last season are more similar to the problems they were facing in previous times. The main threat in the Commonwealth is not cult worship or cannibalism, but labor rights rebellion. It’s less terrifying than deeply depressing.

One of the reasons zombie apocalypses and the end of the world are so popular in fiction is that they offer an escape from the mundane and the overwhelming conventions of modern society. It’s easy to imagine what kind of person we would be if we didn’t have jobs to go to and bills to pay. It’s a balance. The idiot who put you in line or didn’t tip you got eaten first. That’s the fantasy, right?

Two bartenders in the Commonwealth of The Walking Dead

Maggie looks bloody and tired in a still from The Walking Dead

Finally as the Walking Dead found that these types of people and situations will come back; That’s the price to pay for safety and complacency. You can afford to be rude when you’re not fighting to survive. The main antagonist in Season 11B is a legitimate, privileged product of nepotism named Sebastian Milton. His mother, Pamela, is a former politician who seems hell-bent on preserving the world that has benefited her. They’re exactly the sort of people you’d think didn’t have the strength to survive an apocalypse, and here they boss our weathered survivors around. Pamela’s power comes from a reactionary place of intimacy and comfort, and that’s not always a good thing.

For example, think of the children. the Walking Dead has been on the air (and jumped ahead of time) so long that we watched several kids grow up in the zombie apocalypse. They were denied what we consider “normal childhood” and had to grow up very quickly with all the violence and death surrounding them. But when Daryl can’t afford to give Judith Grimes an allowance when she asks, it’s a reminder that so-called normal childhood also has its disappointments.

Is it even ethical to rebuild society the way it was before, flaws and all? This question was also asked in another post-apocalyptic series this year: station eleven. The antagonist of this series (for lack of a better term) rejected efforts to bring society back to what it was. And bind such subjects station eleven to something like the Walking DeadThe final arcs of , especially as we viewers keep dipping in and out of society in the waning days of a global trauma that could have shattered the world.

In our world, the pandemic has revealed priorities in ways that are sometimes heartwarming and sometimes painful. the Walking Dead is well-placed to use his last season to tackle this in creative, if not a little pushy, ways.