‘The Walking Dead’ season finale recap: Who lives, who dies?

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for the The Walking Dead season 6 finale "Last Day on Earth." To read our recap of last week's, click here.

Well that was ... something.

The Walking Dead has always been a show that thrives on tension. One of the most compelling things about zombies is the particular kind of stress they can create for a viewer. However, six seasons into a show, you may have partially exhausted the different ways zombies can be scary. You may have also partially exhausted the different ways humans can be scary, when put into survival situations that bring out the worst in them. And so, recently The Walking Dead has been relying on surprises and reveals (ahem, some may call them gimmicks) to keep things going. Yes, I'm talking about Glenn last year. I'm talking about Daryl last week. And I'm talking about whoever the heck Negan was beating this episode.

Yes, having an undisclosed hero be horribly beaten and/or killed is a cliffhanger that will keep fans guessing over the course of a long hiatus. But it is also incredibly frustrating. The way the final scene was shot, down to Negan's use of eenie meenie miney mo, felt unearned. It felt cheap. There's no emotion behind an anonymous death/maiming. How are we supposed to care? We don't know who. We don't know why. Yes, this will keep fans guessing, but not necessarily in a good way. When the show returns for its seventh season, how much emotion will be behind this death? Will we care who dies or will the question take away our investment? How many times can the show pull one over on us before it's one time too many?

The show would be well-served to dispense with this particular device, and to quickly and unambiguously clear up who Negan just killed (or almost-killed) when it returns in the fall. Because this is exhausting.

A life worth living

Before we get to the Negan of it all, let's talk about two of our favorite characters, who are basically on a walkabout. Morgan finds the wayward Carol with surprising efficiency, and the pair return to their default position: Arguing. Carol has done a near 180 this season (a storyline that has been sloppy at best and mildly sexist at worst but, alas, I digress) but her worldview is still completely the opposite of Morgan's. Now she simply has given up on life, on living in this world, while he thinks there is still value to be found in all the post-apocalyptic chaos.

In between all their bickering, Carol manages to be found by the one survivor of her road massacre from last week. (How did he not bleed out? How did he find her in his state? Sigh.) He's intent on having her die the slow death he is currently dying. After being shot twice (we're sure she'll survive, the main characters always do these days), Morgan saves her by killing the man, without much hesitation this time. He does happen to find some really nice Fallout cosplayers dudes in football padding with spears (from the Hilltop maybe?) who offer their help. See Carol? There are still nice people left in the world. There are two of them, and literally everyone else is a Savior hiding in the woods wherever you happen to be. And hey, speaking of...

Road trip to nowhere

OK. Let's just say that the Saviors have numbers in the hundreds. Let's also say that their territory covers a wide distance and they are spread out. Oh and we have to also say that they are well-trained and have a lot of time on their hands to wait around to ambush people. If we assume all of that (and those are big assumptions, as the show has not given us much information to explain the Saviors' ability to pop up exactly where our heroes are at any given time) we still have no explanation as to how they knew that Maggie would be ill and a large party, including Alexandria's leader, would leave the community on that day at that time. Between the man they hung, the red rover with the walkers and the log road block, they were prepared. That is not something they do at the drop of the hat, even if they had someone spying on Alexandria and saw the RV leave. And so it is just hard, when the arc of the episode is entirely dependent on an elaborate and escalating series of roadblocks placed at the exact time and place our heroes are going to be, to really buy into it, when the situation is just so incredible.

But this is what we have to work with. Denise's death meant that the gang had to try to get Maggie to the Hilltop after she developed a mystery ailment, but every single road was blocked in some way by the Saviors, who pretty emphatically have said that they're done making deals. They even were able to see through Eugene's pretty solid plan to have them walk Maggie to the Hilltop through the woods while he drove the RV as a distraction. Sorry, kids. At least we got one more Maggie/Glenn reunion to add to the list!

Enter the villain

Let's get the speculation over with who Negan beat and possible killed: It was Jon Snow.

But in all seriousness this was a big moment for the show, which has been teasing the entrance of its latest villain all season long. It's worth noting that some of the build-up to Negan seems a little unearned (as if we were meant to know that he is a big deal because he is in the comics), especially since our heroes so effectively have taken out the Saviors so many times. Jeffery Dean Morgan is a commanding presence and had an instant effect when he made his big entrance, Lucille in hand. It was a little unfortunate that the subtle smile and physicality Morgan was working with couldn't stand on its own, and the show immediately had him monologuing. But now we do understand some things about him. His worldview is simple: Give him your stuff (he used a different word) and you get to live. Negan isn't interested in just killing people for the sake of killing them, he wants to get something out of it. He wants power. And how does he display his power? By beating one of our heroes to death or near-death with a barbed wire-covered baseball bat.

Who? Well, the show very much wants us to play a guessing game. Is it Glenn, like in the comics? Is it Darryl, who managed to miraculously survive that point-blank gunshot last episode? Is it Ri-- ha, just kidding Rick is never dying. If I must make a guess, I'd say Aaron and Abraham are in trouble. The show loves killing off its peripheral characters, and Aaron seems to have been brought along on this particular trip for no good reason. Abraham also might be in danger, because he talked about the future a lot in this episode. That's never allowed.

All in all this has been a kind of uneven season with far more questions than answers. There is a lot of opportunity to take the show to interesting places next season, and here's to hoping they can move past cheap tricks and focus on their strengths. Don't let Jeffrey Dean Morgan go to waste. Don't let characters survive the impossible. Don't play games with the audience. Bring some of that good old fashioned tension back.

Thanks for watching with me this season. See you in the fall.