There Are Some Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead Premiere – Mercy Review – Discussion
So the first episode of The Walking Dead season 8 just aired and fans who have long awaited the return of Rick and the rest of the cast of characters can finally find out what’s going on with them this year. In this episode we see Rick and his group join together with the Kingdom and the Hilltop crew to fight against Negan and the Saviours.
As an episode, this is one of the few predominately action based ones for the series. There is a lot less dialogue in this one than usual and things move a lot faster in pace than I’m used to for this show. We see Rick in the beginning make quite the well spoken speech to inspire the three groups to rally against Negan and the Saviours. Then shortly after, we go into almost a whole action sequence where we at first watch Rick and his group make preparations to attack and then later on, the attack on Negan’s group.
If you’re watching the show for action sequences, then this episode has you covered more than most for the series. There’s a good amount of explosions, gun fire and Walkers spread all throughout the episode. The action point of the episode does happen at the end, but there is a long build up tension and short preparation sequences. It was fun to see everything work out so well for Rick and his group after so much hard work.
The change in Rick’s character this season is noticeable. He’s stronger than ever before and is much like his old self before he started grieving all last season about what happened to Glenn and the rest after they encountered Negan. Negan on the other hand, is the same usual character we’ve always known him to be. There’s a short exchange between Negan and Rick where the two chat before the action happens. Surprisingly Negan doesn’t seem at all nervous for the entire thing. Rick does leave Negan for dead as the horde approaches, a thing which maybe people will question, but the episode is called ‘Mercy’ after all. We see at the end that Negan does survive and is with Father Gabriel. Even more surprising, is that Negan seems to have lost none of his composure due to the attack or because of anything going on around him. He must be a complete mad man.
The acting in this episode was great. Andrew Lincoln who plays Rick was certainly the one standing out the most in this episode, he delivered a great monologue and his stature in the action scenes was noticeably good. I do also always enjoy seeing Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the show and his final scene where Negan appears with Gabriel was certainly a memorable moment. I also did enjoy seeing Lauren Cohan a bit more in this one who I think was sort of absent for much of last season.
Overall this was a decent season premiere. It is predominately an action based episode where we saw a lot of action taken by Rick against Negan. Much of the consequences of what happened here are likely to be uncovered next week and I’m not sure at all how this will turn out for the group. With Negan still alive and as confident in himself as ever, really anything could happen from this point on. The Walking Dead season 8 is certainly looking pretty good so far and I’m curious to see what will happen with Rick and his group this year.
The Walking Dead airs at 1:30pm and 7:30pm on the FX channel on Foxtel every Monday
