Why season 8 will ignite The Walking Dead once more

With The Walking Dead entering its eighth season fans are again asking what will happen to Rick and the gang? What post-apocalyptic shenanigans will our lovable (and dwindling) group of walker killing friends get into next?

It is no secret that over the seasons the show lost a little bit of steam along the way (looking at you, prison), but now with probably our fiercest villain to date Rick has a point to prove once more. That this is his world and everyone else is either dead or going to live in it.

Along the seasons on the move from Atlanta to somewhere in Virginia, Rick lost his way once or twice and we as the audience had to suffer. Whether prison farming really is that fun or the show-runners were trying to prove that even Rick could come back from the damned we learned one thing: We like Rick better when all hell breaks lose and someone’s throat is getting bitten out. That is what captivated us in the first place about this show – watching our friends do anything to survive a hell storm of decaying mindless cannibals that want to rip you limb from limb at any given opportunity.

Although that hasn’t worked for most of our original cast, we still have a few left and more coming every season.

Now, The Walking Dead does an excellent job of introducing characters, but where it loses slack is how deep they dive into who the actual characters are. Whether it is a new character like Dwight or Negan or characters we’ve known for a while and are just starting to understand like Sasha or Enid, full blown episodes of character development can get dull weekend after weekend.

Especially after the seasons mind-bending opener (sorry Glen and Abraham) fans expected an action-packed fight back. Rick wouldn’t let his oldest friend get his skull mashed to jelly and then roll over and let the maniac take all of his necessities to live, would he? Well we found that out pretty fast and not to mention another fan favorite who spent most of the season in a cell eating dog food.

This isn’t what we want, we didn’t wait all this time to see our group being manipulated and murdered in the street, to have them separated out of fear and living to provide for a modern-day warlord.

They were lost, Rick begging for help from The Kingdom and The Hilltop and getting tricked by the dumpster folk. I also think King Ezekiel is about to play a much larger role in the wars to come (props if you caught that reference).

What fans wanted was for Rick to roll into Negan’s camp with his Colt and started popping caps in everyone and then take Negan’s prisoners under his wing. However, we got begging and plotting and under the radar schemes we as viewers were only slightly aware of.

The last episode was a good one, I’ll give season 7 that. It was nicely shot and well done, wrapping up Sasha’s story and a fair amount of action. Although not nearly enough for a season without it. We got to see Ezekiel’s tiger in action and who’s side the dumpster people were really on. With an ending like that though it left fans asking, what next? War.

Season 8 will be mayhem, an all out war, Rick vs. Negan, pretty bad vs. very evil, us vs. them. Season 7 promised us to rise up and now we’re up and ready to go. This season will get Walking Dead fans back on the edge of their seat watching our group fight for their lives against an enemy who has firepower and men we haven’t seen before.

Rick is done playing games and he wants blood. He now knows Negan will bring Lucille down on Carl without hesitation, and anyone else he cares about for that matter. Enough is enough – it needs to end. I am very curious to see how the show plays this out because Negan is a big-time villain.

This season is what last season was building to. Will we probably get a few character building episodes, most likely, but I believe they will be in between life threatening situations. We will once again fear for our groups’ lives through battle and survival, not by being huddled in a circle with a bat and children’s rhymes.

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Negan and the Saviors better watch out because Rick is back, Daryl is back, Michonne is back, Carol is even back and they are out for you. If we’ve learned one thing through the camps, farms, prisons, and sanctuaries although it may be slow at times and drag on, when our group is out for vengeance and to defend themselves you better be prepared to fight because we don’t lose especially not twice.

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