The Walking Dead’s finale special effects reach new levels

Visual effects on The Walking Dead finale proved to be spectacular.

When the finale of season 10 of The Walking Dead was delayed due to COVID, there was much outcry and gnashing of teeth. To be so close but yet so far was hard, especially when it was clear that the episode had been largely completed.

Statements from the show-runners showed that it was only post-production that was incomplete.  Visual effects that couldn’t be done on a home computer were the only thing holding the finale up, and it was frustrating for all.

Now we’ve seen the finale we can understand just why post-production on this episode was so important, and why it took so long, and that it was – after all this time – worth the wait.

From the pre-titles scenes of Beta hallucinating the walkers talking to him, we see how vital the special effects on the extraordinarily large herd are, and how epic the scope of the episode is.

The show has always hit it out of the park when it comes to practical effects – Greg Nicotero’s team has proved inventive, effective and consistent when it comes to the latex and fake blood of the walkers on the show.

In fact, the fake blood was out by the gallon for some impressive gore with the Whisperers and Beatrice’s torn-to-pieces deaths in “A Certain Doom”.

However, the CGI visual effects have not always lived up to the same level. The fake deer in the season 7 Rick and Michonne focused episode “Say Yes”, and the shot of Rick with the never-ending garbage dump behind him in “New Best Friends” became famous for all the wrong reasons.

Thankfully, there was no need to worry that those awkward scenes would be recreated in “A Certain Doom” as the visual effects proved not only efficacious but emotive too.

The scenes of the gigantic horde of walkers as seen from the tower were perfect, not just in creating a picture of the imposing terror that Gabriel and the others were feeling, but also managed to show the herd as an almost Borg-like unified threat.

Seeing the walkers move in ripples and waves like a murmuration of starlings, turning and drifting to whatever stimulus floats their way, gave them an extra level of creepiness we’ve not seen before.

That creepiness was then layered with a haunting beauty in the clifftop scenes towards the end of the episode, with Lydia and Carol.

Carol standing on the precipice as the walkers stumbled past her was a stunningly beautiful scene, and one we know was largely created in post-production. Behind the scenes photos of the filming show Melissa McBride standing on a “cliff” of about 4 foot high, surrounded by scrubland and trees.

The stunning views that replaced that reality of a valley, with water running through and a never ending sky were all created in post-production. The scale of the scene truly echoed the scale of the herd, the scale of the position Carol was in, and the scale of the burdens on her shoulder.

One could easily understand how Carol could look into that exquisite abyss below her and be tempted by the ultimate release. The scene had almost a heavenly feel with the vista that was created by the visual effects team.

Those visuals, coupled with the incredibly powerful acting by McBride and Cassady McClincy, and the sublime score by Bear McReady and Sam Ewing came together to make one of the most beautiful scenes in TWD history.

The shot of Alpha’s mask flying over the cliff into the valley, caught in slow motion along with tumbling walkers all around really was a stunning visual representation of the end of the Whisperer arc.

In most cases visual effects should go by totally unnoticed, but in the case of “A Certain Doom”, knowing these scenes were created almost entirely in post-production really drive home how hard the entire creative team work to create an all encompassing story.