There Are Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead Honor Review & Episode Discussion – Watch The Episode Then Read 🙂
Honor is the 9th episode of the 8th season of The Walking Dead and is an important one in the season as it is the premiere episode for the show’s mid-season return and the first episode for the series in 2018. In the last episode we were left with a lot of questions for what was to happen to Rick and his group who ended up living down a hole while Negan destroyed their town. There was also questions to be answered regarding the fate of Carl and also Ezekiel who both were in danger of possibly being killed off soon.
Another unanswered question the show had left us with was how exactly Negan and his group got out of their facility which was surrounded by Walkers? I had actually no idea how they would do it and much of the last few episodes made a point of it being something genius from Eugune, so I was expecting something really grand out of it all. But disappointingly, all they really had to do was shoot the Walkers down from the window outside, which in way made a bit of a path and it was by doing this that Negan and everyone else could just run out fairly easily. It’s insane how easy it was really, it seems you would just do that towards the end out of desperation anyway. But I guess it’s what worked. I just thought that in the end the escape was a little hyped up unnecessarily.
The big thing out of this episode was what happened with Carl. But first I’d like to cover what happened with Ezekiel who also had quite a bit going on. Ezekiel as we know was captured by one of Negan’s men and his Kingdom is pretty much in ruins. He’s sort of carried around a bit like a hostage and it seems his death is imminent. But unknown to him, Carol and Morgan are out there and are able to rescue him in the end so all is good. I’m happy that Ezekiel has been saved, I didn’t think the character would really be on his way out just yet. I think there’s much more that they can do with him going forward, particularly after what happened to his tiger and also his subjects. There’s massive opportunities there for character development going forward. What they will do with Ezekiel and where the character could go from here, I’m not too sure though.
The biggest thing from The Walking Dead – Honor is what happens to poor young Carl. This is a character we’ve all followed since season 1 and have watched grow up on the show. There’s been a lot of events that went on in this character’s life, but now the time has come for it to end. In this episode, Carl is dead! We learnt last year in the mid-season final that Carl had been bitten, but his fate was unknown. Much of this episode deals with his final moments and his final comments to his father, Rick.
It’s a little sad to see a character who has been in the show so long go like this. Although I didn’t feel that season 8 had that many great Carl moments, he still did get quite a few good ones. I wasn’t sure where they were going with the character at all. But I guess they won’t be going anywhere with him. Carl’s death acts in a way as a motivation change for Rick. As we know Rick is at war with Negan’s people and is happy with his plan of killing them all, which we know Carl is opposed to. Carl does bring up some type of integration with a dream like story about the future “you brought them all in and we all live together”. Meaning that Rick can end the war and the group’s can live together, which is in reference a little to what happened back in the days with the Governor and his group. A bit of this is shown in a dream sequence, which I think is the same dream sequence we’ve been seeing this whole season. While we thought it was Rick’s dream, it was Carl’s. Carl’s wish is that his father can become like this again and all people’s can live together.
The episode ends with a final twist, after Carl’s death Rick is thinking about this dream like place where everyone is living together happily. Instead of seeing one of the members of his group living there with him, he instead sees Negan. What I think this mean’s is not necessarily that Negan is going to live with Rick in the future, but it symbolises the thought in Ricks mind of Negan’s group living there with him (possibly Negan too in some way). As we know, Negan’s people all call themselves Negan, so essentially and symbolically they’re all the same. It’s an interesting way to end the episode.
In the end of it all, Carl’s death was quite sad. Seeing Rick chat to him in the end and telling his son that everything he did was for him and it always was, was a really sad moment. The burying scene and everything about it was quite morbid. The episode itself was generally dark in tone, even the lighting and everything was so dark! I feel some people might feel this episode was a little slow and it was in a way.
The passing of Carl was long and slow, but also sad. I wonder what will happen next week and how Rick and Ezekiel’s characters might change, specifically since both leaders have endured so much loss recently. We have an interesting second half of the show going forward, I’m curious to see how it all unfolds.
The Walking Dead airs express from the US on Mondays from at 1.30pm and 7:30pm on Showcase on Foxtel