When it debuted in the fall of 2010, The Walking Dead exploded onto the Peak TV landscape. Its first few years provided a bountiful Venn diagram of fandom involving comic-book aficionados, zombie and horror devotees, and those who latched onto it while riding the new wave of AMC’s collection of “prestige†TV series. It was dramatic and gruesome and unpredictable with monstrous ratings that only provided fuel to the fire of its aimless narrative goals. Based on Robert Kirkman’s comic-book series, which explicitly set out to “explore how people deal with extreme situations and how these events CHANGE them,†there was no real ending in sight — only survival.
And then came the drop, one that’s been steadily ongoing since the series’ midpoint. Despite all manner of spinoffs (there are currently three other separate shows set in its universe with two either planned or in the pipeline), its cultural relevance has dropped from must-see TV to a stronghold of fans hanging on for the finale. Theories about this decline have ranged from a mismanagement of the narrative to simple oversaturation, but regardless, the consensus remains that it’s just not quite as good as it used to be. In preparation for the final episode on November 20, here’s a list of 13 episodes from throughout the show that illuminate its early strengths, its narrative highs and lows, and the overall arc of one of the most popular TV shows of all time.
“Days Gone Byeâ€
With an expanded length of 67 minutes and written and directed by original showrunner Frank Darabont, the first episode of The Walking Dead provided a movie-esque experience to kick off the series. Its agonizing loneliness sets it apart from the ensemble nature of future episodes, and the main takeaway that the audience and protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) are left with isn’t “Whoa, cool zombies†but rather a sense of grisly loss. This isolated nature means that it can be watched apart from the rest of the show if one wants and remains a highlight of the zombie genre.
“Wildfireâ€
The penultimate episode of the first season, “Wildfire†opens on a scene that will become extremely familiar going forward: a devastated group of survivors trying to recover from an attack by the undead. Rick barely gets to know his new companions before Andrea (Laurie Holden) is forced to kill her bitten younger sister Amy (Emma Bell). Meanwhile, Jim (Andrew Rothenberg) realizes he is about to turn into a “Walker†and opts to be abandoned by the group rather than put them in danger. Looking back, it feels so personal and melancholy in the beginning, but an expanding cast would turn it into a casual norm.
“TS-19â€
The final episode of the first season hints at a concept the series would toy with for years to come — that there is no real or possible ending. A lone scientist (Noah Emmerich) stranded in a CDC center in Atlanta imparts silently to Rick a secret that he’s been researching. Eventually, it will come to light: The disease affects nearly everyone, and when you die, you just become a zombie anyway. These stakes will drive and stain the series to come, enhancing the nonstop survivalist action while rendering its overall nature wildly nihilistic.
“What Lies Aheadâ€
Opening the second season, “What Lies Ahead†is the end result of a strained production. It is showrunner Frank Darabont’s final effort for the series; he’d step down amid budget cuts and heavy creative disagreements with AMC. As such, the episode is both energized and meandering. The number of zombies killed goes into overdrive and there are some suspenseful moments, but it also introduces what will quickly become one of the most tired repeating subplots: A character goes missing and a bit of each subsequent episode is devoted to stomping through the woods looking for them. In this case, it’s little Sophia (Madison Lintz), and it will take half a season before the group realizes that she’s just been a zombie in a barn for a few weeks.
“Better Angelsâ€
The penultimate episode of season two provides an example of the balancing act of adaptation: What will be kept from the comic-book source material? And if it is kept, when will the new creative team pull the trigger? In this case, it’s the death of Shane (Jon Bernthal), Rick’s best frenemy and a character who’s evolved from co–team leader to broody outsider. Rick stabs Shane to death, and Rick’s son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), shoots a resurrected Shane (a reversal from the comics in which Carl shoots a living Shane to death only six issues in). The timing is actually an improvement from the source material, especially thanks to Bernthal imbuing Shane with a manic, desperate quality that he lacks in the comics.
“Walk With Meâ€
The third episode of the third season involves a combination of comic-book crowd-pleasing and TV-series staples. Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker), the loudmouth brother of fan-favorite character Daryl (Norman Reedus), returns with a knife in place of his missing hand, beginning a trend of characters dropping in and out of the show (sometimes to appear in its spinoffs). Meanwhile, we get the debut of the Governor (David Morrisey), the first arch villain of the comics, and a concluding scene with the Governor’s collection of zombified heads in tanks, something the comics had turned into an iconic visual. It cements the aims of the show as both adaptation and adjustment.
“Killer Withinâ€
Just one episode later, The Walking Dead gives a shock-and-awe moment that it will never outdo and never live down. In an absolute bloodbath of a story (we lose side character T-Dog (Robert Singleton) in what will become a borderline ritualistic pattern of “If the person who doesn’t really get much to do has a surprising amount of dialogue all of a sudden, they’re dying in this episodeâ€) Rick’s wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), who learns she’s pregnant in season two, has complications during labor and is killed by the ensuing C-section. The baby survives, and her son, Carl, shoots Lori before she can reanimate. Rick’s reaction is appropriately hysterical grief, and a shot of Rick sobbing near Carl will be turned into the defining meme of the show.
“Too Far Goneâ€
The mid-season finale of season four flips the chess board in what has become traditional Walking Dead style: The stronghold they’ve been hiding out in (in this case, a prison) gets invaded by Walkers and the returning Governor’s army. The Governor kills off Hershel (Scott Wilson), perhaps the most simply good character in the series, and wallops the heck out of Rick in a fistfight before being stabbed by his former enemy Michonne (Danai Gurira). While it will scatter the cast for multiple episodes of wandering, it’s the closest the show has come to a satisfying payoff, and the eyepatch-wearing Governor remains its best antagonist.
“The Groveâ€
The show’s long run has allowed us to watch characters, most notably Carl Grimes, grow up, exploring the question, “What will happen to the generation that only knows this reality?†In the case of season-four episode “The Grove,†the answer is clear: It messes them up pretty bad. Orphaned older sister Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino), a zombie-obsessed child with what can only be called a flimsy relationship to other people, kills her younger sister in an effort to get her to reanimate. This leads their surrogate mom Caro (Melissa McBride), at this point defined by doing ugly jobs that other characters ethically hem and haw about, to do in Lizzie. The murder of children by other children and then by a supposed maternal figure is the most disturbing sequence thus far, and it leaves the show with nowhere to go but an increased body count.
“Codaâ€
The mid-season finale of the fifth season is a mixed bag that carries the strengths of the first half of the series while also being weighed down by the slights of its second half. After a prolonged search for the likable Beth (Emily Kinney), she’s found trapped by the tyrannical rulers of a hospital. However, just as Beth is being returned to her group after a tense standoff, she’s abruptly murdered. Here, the unpredictability that made the show such an obsessive watch in its first few seasons ensures that a plot feels wasted upon its resolution. It calls into question the entire methodology of that brand of storytelling. If characters can die at any time with no sense of narrative or character fulfillment, why get attached to anyone?
“The Day Will Come When You Won’t Beâ€
The most infamous scene in The Walking Dead happens in the first episode of its seventh season: Captured by the villainous Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), beloved survivor Glenn (Steven Yeun) has his head bludgeoned in with a baseball bat. Wait, that’s not all: Between swings, with his eye popped from his skull, he weakly calls out for his wife. Even within the realm of a series that has established itself as lawless in regards to living and dying, it’s a cruel disposal of a fan-favorite character. Between this episode and the next, ratings plummeted by nearly five million viewers and the show would never recover from its reception.
“Wrathâ€
If any episode could’ve served as a pre-finale finale of The Walking Dead, it’s “Wrath.†After the show spun its wheels for two seasons of “war†between Negan and Rick’s groups and allies, Rick is finally able to get the closest thing to revenge. However, he allows Negan to live, as he remembers a parting note from his deceased son Carl (who died a few episodes earlier with no real fanfare) that asked him to show mercy. After eight seasons of alternating between a violent leader and peacekeeper, Rick’s adjustment to atone might seem sudden but at least it’s something in a series devoted to extending its narrative past exhausting limits.
“What Comes Afterâ€
Despite a steady drop in ratings that has left the main series performing as a shadow of how it once did, The Walking Dead remains too big to quit. It’s got a sprawling expanded universe of tie-in shows and remains a merchandising behemoth, meaning that we’re destined to have more of it on the way for the indefinite future. This is no more evident than in “What Comes After,†the fifth episode of the ninth season where a hallucinating Rick encounters previously deceased characters (not hard, since nearly everyone he’s ever known on the show has been killed/zombified) and is whisked away in a mysterious helicopter at the end. Little information is given as to what happened, and soon series regular Michonne departs, too, to look for him. However, whatever frustrating holes are left in the series can be filled by franchising news updates: A spinoff series for Rick has been announced for 2023.