‘The Walking Dead’ Season 10 Finale Recap And Review: An Uncertain Doom

We’ve had some hotly anticipated episodes of The Walking Dead in the past.

Probably the most-anticipated ever was the Season 7 premiere. The showrunners started playing all sorts of dirty tricks in Season 6, from Glenn’s fake-out death to leaving us hanging at the end of the Season 6 finale, with our heroes all rounded up by Negan and the Saviors to answer for their crimes—you know, murdering strangers in their sleep with very little cause and virtually no efforts at reconnaissance. Equal parts cold-blooded and bloody stupid, that was Rick’s gang.

We waited for months to find out whose skulls Negan would bash in with his bat Lucille. I was pretty convinced they wouldn’t kill off Glenn, too, partly because they’re always changing things up from the comics and partly because Glenn is an important character and the show would never be the same without him.

I was wrong and I was right. They killed off Glenn (and Abraham) defying my expectations. And, well, the show has never been the same since.

Over the next two seasons, The Walking Dead just kept getting worse. Bad special effects. Laughably inept writing. Jarring gunfights, poor pacing, an insanely irritating villain, an ever-expanding cast . . . the list goes on and on.

I doubt having Glenn around would have mattered much in the bigger scheme of things.

It wasn’t until Angela Kang took over in Season 9 that things started to get better, though even then, one thing remains true: The Walking Dead will never be the same. Not without Glenn or Rick or Carl. Maggie’s back but Michonne is gone. The cast has been thinned and yet still remains too large and very few of the remaining characters are ones we really care about. They killed off Jesus just when he was getting interesting, and they killed off Siddiq despite him being one of the better newbies (though, in the show’s timeline he was actually a member of the community for twice as long as Rick).

And so we come to “A Certain Doom” the season 10 finale and the end of the Whisperer arc at long last (thank goodness).

I’m not sure where I’d put the Season 10 finale in terms of hype or anticipation, but it’s unique for other reasons. We’ve had to wait half a year for it to air. It was supposed to air the week after episode 15, but COVID-19 struck and our real-world pandemic trumped the fictional zombie pandemic, driving production to a halt. Now, at last, the episode has aired.

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. This post will have spoilers galore.

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 have three big problems with “A Certain Doom.”

• First off, the title is incredibly misleading. Far from being doomed, our heroes come out of the finale stronger than ever. They sustain virtually no losses. The only named character to die is that chick from Oceanside who, let’s face it, nobody cared about to begin with. Carol didn’t stop to save her from the horde and nobody cares. No other major characters other than Beta shuffle off this mortal coil.
• Second, this really should have been an extended episode given the stakes. 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. But it all felt super rushed. 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 just came away feeling like this was more of an afterthought than some epic final showdown.
• The return of Maggie just felt . . . humdrum? Anticlimactic? Flat? She barely talks to anyone. She shows up in the most serendipitous fashion. 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. It’s weird. The handling of Maggie’s departure and return have been a big swing and a miss.

I suppose part of the problem is simply one of expectations. Everyone involved with the show has been hyping this up for months. We all expect something big is coming and it just really doesn’t ever happen.

The survivors have a plan to draw away the horde. 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).

Once through, they hop on a cart and turn on “Burning Down The House” by The Talking Heads.

There are close to a dozen survivors here, both on the cart and flanking it. Daryl, Carol, Lydia (who wasn’t supposed to come), Jerry, Luke, Kelly and some others. 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.

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. I remember thinking at the time, what a stupid plan this is. Rick always has the absolute worst plans. (Actually, I didn’t just think it, I wrote about it in my review of Season 6, Episode 1).

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 . . . somewhere further away.

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 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.

Even when things go wrong—and they do when the cart they were supposed to lead over the edge breaks—they still bounce back. They fight their way through the enemy and then go on the hunt, taking out every Whisperer they can find.

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. I remember thinking at the time, what a stupid plan this is. Rick always has the absolute worst plans. (Actually, I didn’t just think it, I wrote about it in my review of Season 6, Episode 1).

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 . . . somewhere further away.

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 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.

Even when things go wrong—and they do when the cart they were supposed to lead over the edge breaks—they still bounce back. They fight their way through the enemy and then go on the hunt, taking out every Whisperer they can find.

Negan is a part of this merry band as well, and he’s the one to first stumble on Beta. It’s not a fair fight, though Negan puts forth his best effort. Beta is just way bigger, stronger and meaner. Daryl shows up in the nick of time (they always do!) and rams two daggers into Beta’s eyes. It’s a cool way to kill someone, but the fight itself was over in a hurry just like the rest of the episode.

The walkers swarm Beta, ripping and biting at him, though to Beta it’s as though he’s being embraced and caressed. It’s pretty creepy, though I suppose the poor bastard was insane and this was probably the best way for him to go.

As 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. But the Whisperers get into the building and they’re forced to barricade themselves in. They’re outnumbered and a couple of the good guys bite the dust, so Gabriel tells the rest of them to go. He has a shotgun and he’ll hold off the Whisperers and buy them time.

The Whisperers burst through the door and Gabriel puts up a hell of a fight, but he’s badly outnumbered and it looks very much like we’ll get our first (and only) big death of the night when help arrives in the form of Maggie and her masked pal, along with Aaron and Alden. They make short work of the Whisperers.

And then it’s done. The Whisperers and their brutish leader are dead. All that remains is the horde. Carol volunteers to lead them to the edge. So does Lydia. But Carol insists, and when she steps to the edge of the cliff, zombies swarming around her, you get the feeling that she’s ready to jump.

But Lydia grabs her and pulls her back in. They’d already had some nice bonding moments earlier in the episode, but now it all comes to a head. Carol has been unable to save any of her children, whether they’re hers by blood, adoption or simply under her care. Now, one of the kids has saved her instead.

The zombies pour around them, shamble like lemmings over the cliff’s edge, and then the horde is no more. Some very nice instrumental music plays over all of this. It’s definitely one of the better moments in the finale.

The third subplot concerns Eugene and his little group off to meet the mysterious Stephanie who we all know isn’t just some nice lady on the other end of the radio. We know this because we live in a world of uncertainty.

How Eugene and every other member of the group can’t seem to see how weird and suspicious the whole thing is beats me. I mean, these are people who have suffered constantly for years. Struggled against the dead and the living. They’ve been betrayed and double-crossed. They’ve seen good friends die because of carelessness or too much trust. We had a whole long ordeal with Michonne and the newcomers because she was so mistrustful after her and Daryl’s traumatic confrontation with some truly vile people.

These people should be so far beyond trusting random strangers on the radio it’s not even funny. And yet they traipse off to find Stephanie. They meet Princess on the way, and she’s a fun character, so there’s a silver lining to this enormously stupid plan. But at this point, enormously stupid plans should not be happening ever with this group. There should be some checks and balances to flights of fancy.

But characters acting ridiculously stupid has always been a hallmark of The Walking Dead. So we aren’t at all surprised when heavily armed and armored shock troops show up instead of some nice lady Eugene wants to get busy with (”Man, you are so horny,” Princess jokes at him after he gives a little speech about keeping on keeping on).

We aren’t surprised in the least, but it’s still kind of a fun/hilarious scene because Eugene, Yumiko, Ezekiel and Princess sure are surprised. Shocked even, for some reason, even though the whole thing was so clearly a setup.

These are, we can presume, members of the Commonwealth—not to be confused with that other heavily armed group, the CRM (Civil Republican Military) a group we’ll see much more of in The Walking Dead: World Beyond which debuts right after the Season 10 finale. One of these groups is likely behind the whole Rick kidnapping back in Season 9 (seven years ago in show time). We’ll know more when The Walking Dead returns, and probably learn a thing or two from World Beyond also.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The man who trapped Michonne—Virgil—has made his way to Alexandria. He’s exploring the area when he comes across a disoriented and helpless Connie, who is still alive, though in rough shape. Virgil, you may recall, seemed like a nice enough guy until he turned out to be totally nuts. I’m not sure if him showing up is a good or a bad thing for Connie. Maybe both.

The Walking Dead now has 30 more episodes. Six more “anthology” style episodes for Season 10 (the first show I know of that has episodes come after the season finale!) and then two 12-episode half seasons for Season 11. Then it’s a wrap—except for all the spinoffs.

Overall this was a perfectly fine season finale. I have some gripes but they biggest one is just that it felt kind of flat compared to earlier episodes this season.

The killing of Alpha by Negan, as part of a scheme cooked up by Carol, was way more interesting. And Daryl’s first fight with Beta was a lot more action-packed and drawn out.

But I think the humor and the emotional beats were well done here and maybe it wouldn’t have felt quite so underwhelming had it aired when it was supposed to.

What did you think of “A Certain Doom”? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.