The Walking Dead: Seasons 4-7
Year: 2013-2017
Created by: Frank Darabont
Starring: Lauren Cohan, Michael Cudlitz, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Seth Gilliam, Danai Gurira, Lennie James, Chad L. Coleman, Andrew Lincoln, Ross Marquand, Sonequa Martin Green, Alana Masterson, Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt, David Morrissey, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Christian Serratos & Steven Yuen
Episodes: 64 (4 Seasons)
BBFC: 18
Published: 03/06/22
Created by: Frank Darabont
Starring: Lauren Cohan, Michael Cudlitz, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Seth Gilliam, Danai Gurira, Lennie James, Chad L. Coleman, Andrew Lincoln, Ross Marquand, Sonequa Martin Green, Alana Masterson, Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt, David Morrissey, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Christian Serratos & Steven Yuen
Episodes: 64 (4 Seasons)
BBFC: 18
Published: 03/06/22
By the time that The Walking Dead was wrapping up its third season the show was truly a worldwide sensation, being the most watched cable TV show on air at that time, and it would continue to hold that title for the next few seasons despite the quality of the show declining. In this second part of my big Walking Dead recap review, which I’m referring to as The Fall of The Walking Dead, I’ll take a look at Seasons Four through Seven, where the writing quality started to dip significantly, common complaints about the first three seasons were exacerbated even further, and fans were repeatedly alienated by poor creative decisions that ultimately led to a loss of around fifty percent of the shows viewers (myself included for a time). Buckle up, things are about to get rough.
Season Four starts strong with the overarching storyline of the prison group vs Woodbury being carried over from the previous season, with the Governor (David Morrissey) more deranged than ever and willing to go to any lengths (including killing his own men) to take the prison from Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his fellow survivors. This comes to a head in the midseason episode when the Governor executes Hershel (Scott Wilson) and the two communities engage in battle in the prison courtyard. With the Governor dead and the prison destroyed, Rick’s community are separated and some gravely injured. But they all begin following various signs towards a place called Terminus, the journey to which lasts the rest of the season.
Season Four’s first half continues at a steady pace, escalating the action and stakes appropriately from Season Three. But that story only had legs so long and the middle of the season feels appropriate for that storyline to be resolved. It’s the second half of Season Four that really drags down the entire experience, because basically the entirety of it can be skipped. Whilst it allows for some welcome character development for people like Carol (Melissa McBride), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Beth (Emily Kinney), Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Carl (Chandler Riggs), and major newcomers Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Rosita (Christian Serratos), and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) join the show, a whole eight episodes are dedicated to people just walking through a forest, along some train tracks, or along a road. It’s so horrendously boring and slow paced, and the vast majority of what happens is meaningless and can be skipped entirely. Whilst the finale, when our group are reunited at Terminus, does give some much-needed excitement to the whole affair, it’s truly one of the slowest and most tedious points of the entire series.
Season Four starts strong with the overarching storyline of the prison group vs Woodbury being carried over from the previous season, with the Governor (David Morrissey) more deranged than ever and willing to go to any lengths (including killing his own men) to take the prison from Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his fellow survivors. This comes to a head in the midseason episode when the Governor executes Hershel (Scott Wilson) and the two communities engage in battle in the prison courtyard. With the Governor dead and the prison destroyed, Rick’s community are separated and some gravely injured. But they all begin following various signs towards a place called Terminus, the journey to which lasts the rest of the season.
Season Four’s first half continues at a steady pace, escalating the action and stakes appropriately from Season Three. But that story only had legs so long and the middle of the season feels appropriate for that storyline to be resolved. It’s the second half of Season Four that really drags down the entire experience, because basically the entirety of it can be skipped. Whilst it allows for some welcome character development for people like Carol (Melissa McBride), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Beth (Emily Kinney), Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Carl (Chandler Riggs), and major newcomers Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Rosita (Christian Serratos), and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) join the show, a whole eight episodes are dedicated to people just walking through a forest, along some train tracks, or along a road. It’s so horrendously boring and slow paced, and the vast majority of what happens is meaningless and can be skipped entirely. Whilst the finale, when our group are reunited at Terminus, does give some much-needed excitement to the whole affair, it’s truly one of the slowest and most tedious points of the entire series.
Season Five spends the first half of the season dealing with the cannibals at Terminus and Beth (who was kidnapped during Season Four). Rick leads groups to hunt down and capture the Terminus survivors in the nearby area, as well as form a defensive group against Terminus citizens who might try and retaliate. Where Carol & Daryl search for Beth’s whereabouts. The midseason point sees Beth’s story resolved in one of the series more heart wrenching moments. With the group on the move again in the second half of the season they discover New Alexandria, a functioning settlement with a community that seems welcoming enough as they want to grow their numbers. This second half of the season introduces a lot of new characters and primarily focuses on Rick’s group trying to settle down into a life before the apocalypse in the seemingly safe settlement they have joined. But the damage done to Rick’s psyche from being the groups leader for so long puts them all in danger.
This season is all slow and monotonous like the second half of Season Four. There’s just a whole lot of nothing happening most of the time. Beth’s story is by far the standout storyline of the series, and whilst the New Alexandria stuff is a change of pace, trying to see these hardened survivors adjust to things like committee meetings and home improvement is a interesting angle for the show to go down. But there’s no stakes here…or at least it doesn’t feel like there are any. The series genuinely feels like it’s stuck in neutral at this point and has nothing new to bring to the table. The only truly memorable new character is Aaron (Ross Marquand), and whilst there’s some interesting power play dynamics going on with the leader of Alexandria, Deanna Monroe (Tovah Feldshuh) and Rick, it ultimately never really goes anywhere.
This season is all slow and monotonous like the second half of Season Four. There’s just a whole lot of nothing happening most of the time. Beth’s story is by far the standout storyline of the series, and whilst the New Alexandria stuff is a change of pace, trying to see these hardened survivors adjust to things like committee meetings and home improvement is a interesting angle for the show to go down. But there’s no stakes here…or at least it doesn’t feel like there are any. The series genuinely feels like it’s stuck in neutral at this point and has nothing new to bring to the table. The only truly memorable new character is Aaron (Ross Marquand), and whilst there’s some interesting power play dynamics going on with the leader of Alexandria, Deanna Monroe (Tovah Feldshuh) and Rick, it ultimately never really goes anywhere.
Season Six ploughs full steam ahead with this stagnation too. The first half of the season continues this power struggle between Rick and Deanna, with New Alexandria being placed under increasingly more deadly threats because of them. When the community is overrun by a massive herd of walkers, Rick’s group move out and discover another nearby settlement, The Hilltop. Hilltop agree to help the New Alexandrians as long as they help them gid rid of a group of bandits called The Saviours. As Rick and co perform a series of attacks on Saviour outposts they begin to be sought out by the group’s leader, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who is none too happy about his power being challenged.
The sixth season of the show is just a blur to me, and I can barely remember any of it (despite having just re-watched it). Similar to Season Five there’s just so much not happening that the two kind of blend together a little bit. I did enjoy seeing Alexandria come under siege, and the setup to The Saviours is fantastic with Rick’s group essentially setting in motion their own demise out of desperation and arrogance. This out of all the seasons exemplifies that the show should never have had sixteen episodes per season as eight would have been more than sufficient, and even then, there might have had room to trim back to even fewer episodes than that.
Part of the problem with seasons Five and Six might be that it was around this time that spin-off show Fear the Walking Dead started, with many of the creatives involved in this mainline show working on the spin-off too, meaning that people were stretched thin and clearly not enough work was being put in to the mainline show to keep it interesting.
The sixth season of the show is just a blur to me, and I can barely remember any of it (despite having just re-watched it). Similar to Season Five there’s just so much not happening that the two kind of blend together a little bit. I did enjoy seeing Alexandria come under siege, and the setup to The Saviours is fantastic with Rick’s group essentially setting in motion their own demise out of desperation and arrogance. This out of all the seasons exemplifies that the show should never have had sixteen episodes per season as eight would have been more than sufficient, and even then, there might have had room to trim back to even fewer episodes than that.
Part of the problem with seasons Five and Six might be that it was around this time that spin-off show Fear the Walking Dead started, with many of the creatives involved in this mainline show working on the spin-off too, meaning that people were stretched thin and clearly not enough work was being put in to the mainline show to keep it interesting.
The show ultimately lost me with Season Six, though I stuck around for the first few episodes of Season Seven because I was young and stupid, but at this point I was so done with the show and it took a long time for me to come back to it. The first episode of Season Seven is undoubtedly the best in that season, yet it’s also the episode that had the largest negative reaction to the show and sent a lot of fans packing. During the first episode Negan brutally murders fan favourite’s Glenn & Abraham and then spends the rest of the episode torturing Rick to the point where he breaks psychologically and submits to Negan’s rule.
Season Seven then consists of The Saviours menacing and occasionally torturing the residents of Hilltop, New Alexandria, and a third nearby outpost, Oceanside…and that’s basically it.
The one good thing about Season Seven is Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s performance as Negan, an absolute scene stealer if there ever was one and arguably the best actor to have ever starred in the show. The rest of Season Seven is overlong, overdrawn, and short on ideas. It does introduce a fourth survivor settlement, The Kingdom, led by King Ezekiel (Khary Payton), but they don’t really come into their own until Season Eight once the show begins its redemption path.
Season Seven doesn’t go down too well because our leading characters are being constantly weakened by Negan and the Saviours and they just roll over to their demands the whole time. It’s jarring to see that following on from over eighty episodes where Rick and his group are always putting up a fight against overwhelming odds but here they just take it.
It’s easy to see why The Walking Dead started to dip in popularity significantly by the time Season Seven stepped up to the plate. For years fans had been complaining about the same issues of episodes that contained nothing worthwhile, characters that had long overstayed their welcome, and the show just shuffling our group from one place to another to have them go through the same dramas all over again. Killing off fan favourite characters and then making the survivors suffer for a season without a glimmer of hope in sight was enough to put many off the show entirely.
Thankfully there was hope on the horizon, but the creative team behind the show would need to make some drastic changes in order to try and win back public opinion, and it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Season Seven then consists of The Saviours menacing and occasionally torturing the residents of Hilltop, New Alexandria, and a third nearby outpost, Oceanside…and that’s basically it.
The one good thing about Season Seven is Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s performance as Negan, an absolute scene stealer if there ever was one and arguably the best actor to have ever starred in the show. The rest of Season Seven is overlong, overdrawn, and short on ideas. It does introduce a fourth survivor settlement, The Kingdom, led by King Ezekiel (Khary Payton), but they don’t really come into their own until Season Eight once the show begins its redemption path.
Season Seven doesn’t go down too well because our leading characters are being constantly weakened by Negan and the Saviours and they just roll over to their demands the whole time. It’s jarring to see that following on from over eighty episodes where Rick and his group are always putting up a fight against overwhelming odds but here they just take it.
It’s easy to see why The Walking Dead started to dip in popularity significantly by the time Season Seven stepped up to the plate. For years fans had been complaining about the same issues of episodes that contained nothing worthwhile, characters that had long overstayed their welcome, and the show just shuffling our group from one place to another to have them go through the same dramas all over again. Killing off fan favourite characters and then making the survivors suffer for a season without a glimmer of hope in sight was enough to put many off the show entirely.
Thankfully there was hope on the horizon, but the creative team behind the show would need to make some drastic changes in order to try and win back public opinion, and it wouldn’t happen overnight.