He has a shotgun and he’ll hold off the Whisperers and buy them time.
They’re outnumbered and a couple of the good guys bite the dust, so Gabriel tells the rest of them to go. But the Whisperers get into the building and they’re forced to barricade themselves in. It’s pretty creepy, though I suppose the poor bastard was insane and this was probably the best way for him to go.Īs all this is going on, Gabriel, Judith and some of the others are trying to make their escape, taking the more vulnerable out the back. The walkers swarm Beta, ripping and biting at him, though to Beta it’s as though he’s being embraced and caressed. It’s a cool way to kill someone, but the fight itself was over in a hurry just like the rest of the episode. Daryl shows up in the nick of time (they always do!) and rams two daggers into Beta’s eyes. Beta is just way bigger, stronger and meaner. It’s not a fair fight, though Negan puts forth his best effort. Negan is a part of this merry band as well, and he’s the one to first stumble on Beta. They fight their way through the enemy and then go on the hunt, taking out every Whisperer they can find. The cliff is handy, of course, but even before that they manage to just be smarter and keep it simple (stupid) by using music to get the herd’s attention and then just calmly walking them to the cliff.Įven when things go wrong-and they do when the cart they were supposed to lead over the edge breaks-they still bounce back. They’re surrounded by the horde, which is being controlled by evil Whisperers, and yet they still make a better go of it than Rick. The difference, of course, is that our heroes now, many years in the future, are not attempting to herd a horde from a quarry to. (Actually, I didn’t just think it, I wrote about it in my review of Season 6, Episode 1). Rick always has the absolute worst plans. I remember thinking at the time, what a stupid plan this is. This brings me back to when Rick and company found all those walkers in the quarry and came up with a super elaborate plan to draw them out and it all went wrong. The horde follows them, and the idea is to drive the cart to the edge of a cliff and have the horde follow it over the side. Daryl, Carol, Lydia (who wasn’t supposed to come), Jerry, Luke, Kelly and some others. There are close to a dozen survivors here, both on the cart and flanking it. Once through, they hop on a cart and turn on “Burning Down The House” by The Talking Heads. They sneak through the zombies wearing either skin-masks or ponchos covered in guts and blood (careful not to wipe it all over their faces and risk infection like what happened to poor Gabriel). The survivors have a plan to draw away the horde. We all expect something big is coming and it just really doesn’t ever happen. Everyone involved with the show has been hyping this up for months. I suppose part of the problem is simply one of expectations. The handling of Maggie’s departure and return have been a big swing and a miss. When she sees Judith she just smiles and doesn’t say anything, like they’re afraid to write her any lines, or like the writers think that’s how adults greet children in real life or something. She shows up in the most serendipitous fashion.
humdrum? Anticlimactic? Flat? She barely talks to anyone. I just came away feeling like this was more of an afterthought than some epic final showdown. There were some great moments like Gabriel’s last stand (and timely rescue by Maggie and her mysterious masked friend) but everything just zipped by and it ends up feeling like a less impressive battle than the battle for Hilltop and a less satisfying end to the Big Bad than Negan’s beheading of Alpha. I liked how our heroes drew off the horde with music-that whole scene was very funny, actually-and I enjoyed how they hunted the Whisperers and took out Beta. Second, this really should have been an extended episode given the stakes.No other major characters other than Beta shuffle off this mortal coil. Carol didn’t stop to save her from the horde and nobody cares. The only named character to die is that chick from Oceanside who, let’s face it, nobody cared about to begin with. Far from being doomed, our heroes come out of the finale stronger than ever. First off, the title is incredibly misleading.
I have three big problems with “A Certain Doom.” MORE FROM FORBES 'The Walking Dead' Season 10 Finale Review: Was 'A Certain Doom' Worth The Wait? By Erik Kain A Whimper, Not A Bang I already wrote a spoiler-free review of the episode, so if you haven’t watched it yet and are still curious you can read that right here.