Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead shocks and disturbs fans

Did The Walking Dead go too far with the violence, gore, and atmosphere during the season 7 premiere? Some people vow to never watch the show again.

The Walking Dead aired its season 7 premiere last night, and the response to the episode is very mixed. While many fans enjoyed the physically brutal and psychological games that Negan played with Rick and the survivors, others didn’t seem to enjoy it as much.

Considering the season 6 cliffhanger ending of the show, it isn’t a big surprise that some fans still had a bitter taste in their mouths. Being forced to wait from April to October to find out what happened in the lineup was more than some fans could take, and some swore off the show entirely.

There were media organizations that ripped apart the show for their decision to have the cliffhanger, but now that it is all resolved, things still aren’t good between some critics and the hit AMC zombie survival drama.

The Walking Dead left some fans disgusted with their season 7 premiere on Sunday, October 23, 2016. In fact, major media outlets had articles run ripping apart the choices that the program made during the episode.

USA Today was one of the first to share a piece talking about the graphically violent nature of the show, sharing Twitter posts of fans who swore off the series after the brutal kills. The Verge had an author actually make the statement that they were done because the show was “torture-porn masquerading as drama”. And The Daily Beast says that the program is “asking viewers to be entertained by nothing more than pure, concentrated human pain and misery” and isn’t fun anymore.

Those are just the first three pieces that popped up when searching for The Walking Dead in Google today. This is all despite the huge warnings during the episode about graphic violence and knowledge that at least one character was going to be beaten to a bloody pulp coming in.

The zombie apocalypse isn’t supposed to be a fun place. It isn’t happy. Fans have gotten to see Rick and his group survive without feeling absolutely helpless for too long, and now that the control is gone from the situation, some viewers don’t feel the show is the same.

But the show isn’t the same. One of the biggest complaints about the show is how it was spinning its wheels and nothing new or original has been happening. Now that something has changed the status quo for the show, the outcry is the exact opposite as before.

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This is one of those moments of television that changes everything. The impact of this episode is meant to stretch as long as the show continues and the images of the victims are supposed to haunt viewers. It is supposed to give viewers a feeling they’ve never had before: hopelessness, powerlessness, and uneasiness.

For those with weak stomachs, they knew what was coming. They were warned. If they thought Rick and his group were going to hop on a magic unicorn and fly to happyland to escape Negan and The Saviors, their expectations of The Walking Dead are very unrealistic.

Still, people have every right to not like what they saw. Heck, most fans left the season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead with their eyes full of tears and their stomach in knots. This powerful reaction from viewers just proves how strong of a bond the program has made between their characters and fans.

Next: What happened in the season 7 premiere of TWD?

Was the episode violent, shocking, and disturbing? Absolutely! Was it more than some folks could handle? Possibly. But horrible things will happen during the zombie apocalypse, and this is just one part of the story the The Walking Dead is telling. For those still watching, it will be interesting to watch Rick and his group try to regroup after that incident, and it will be like nothing fans of the series have ever seen before.