AMCWarning: The following contain spoilers from tonight's season finale of The Walking Dead. Proceed with caution.
"Pissing our pants yet?" Maybe.
How exactly does AMC expect us to just sit around and wait until October for new episodes of The Walking Dead after that season finale? After that cliffhanger? How?!
Now that our fingernails have begun to recover from 90 straight minutes of our nervous biting and we can actually think about typing, let's start breaking down the insanity we just witnessed during what turned out to be the world's worst RV ride ever.
After weeks of believing that they were capable of taking out Negan with relative ease, Rick and the gang learned the hard way tonight that they had no real idea what they were up against. A simple day's drive to the Hilltop to get Maggie some emergency medical help turned into one of the cruelest games of cat and mouse we've ever seen. The Saviors anticipated each and every move Rick made out on the road, cutting them off at every possible path with growing numbers each time. It would have almost been funny if it weren't so damn terrifying.
We all knew where this was going: Jeffrey Dean Morgan's highly anticipated (and dreaded) entrance as Negan. After finally learning Daryl's fate (just shot in the arm, it seems) when he, Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita were forced onto their knees alongside Rick's RV crew, it was full-on terror time as Negan sauntered out with Lucille, asking if everyone had wet themselves. (Sidebar: That taunt was meant for the audience at home as much as it was for the characters on the screen, right?) "Sucks, don't it? The moment you realize you don't know s--t," he told Rick. Yes, yes it does.
Negan made it clear what he wanted from everyone, and it was everything. "Give me your s--t or I will kill you. Today was career day. We invested a lot so you would know who I am and what I can do. You work for me now," he explained. "You have s--t, you give it to me. That's your job. Now, I know that is a mighty big, nasty pill to swallow. But swallow it you will."
And then he set out to make an example out of someone, to really drive his point home. It was probably at about this point in the episode that we were full-on shaking. His "eenie, meenie, miney, moe" routine with Lucille aimed at the heads of our heroes as they trembled on their knees? The stuff of nightmares. And the actual act? While we're thankful that the show didn't subject us to the full view of someone having their head smashed like a Gallagher routine gone horribly, horribly wrong, we've got to admit that we're more than a little peeved that the show chose to go the cliffhanger route and not reveal who was killed off. After the Glenn fiasco of last fall, we were hoping the show had maybe learned its lesson about playing with us like this. Clearly, they did not.
So now we have to wait months, replaying the sound of those brutal whacks to someone's head over and over again as we theorize about who's a goner. Who can we petition at AMC to start paying our therapy bills?
As if that wasn't enough, we also have the matter of Carol and Morgan and what new world they'll be in come the fall. After finding her wounded, Morgan and Carol squabbled some more over her decision to leave Alexandria. Of course, she ran off again because that's apparently just what Carol does now and, of course, that damn Savior found her and nearly killed her. As expected, Morgan was forced to betray his nonviolence thing and kill the guy. And then some men in armor arrived and offered them help. Who are these men? Where did they come from? And where are they taking Morgan and Carol? So many questions. And so much time to wait for answers.
What did you think about the finale? And who do you think met their maker tonight? (Our money's still on Glenn. Just saying.)
The Walking Dead returns for season seven this fall on AMC.