Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus promises closure in second half of season 8
By Shawn Lealos
The Walking Dead returns from its midseason break on Sunday, and Norman Reedus says that characters will start to receive closure in the second half of season 8.
Over the last one-and-a-half seasons, The Walking Dead has taken a beating from its fans. In season 7, fans complained that there was not enough action and many felt that Negan was not a good character — at least not as good as he is in the comics.
In season 8, it has been almost all action, with the All-Out War in full-effect, and the fans are still complaining. The most prominent complaints now do not involve a lack of action, as The Walking Dead answered those complaints this season in spades. Instead, it is all about the characters.
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It was evident for most people who read the comics that Negan was the antithesis of Rick Grimes. Negan and Rick are the exact same characters, but ones who went about protecting their people in different ways. Both men did what they believed was right but therein lies the problem for The Walking Dead TV show.
On TV, everyone Rick murders “deserve it” in the eyes of the fans. When Rick goes in and murders people in their sleep just because Gregory from The Hilltop tells them the people are “bad,” fans say they deserve it, and Rick can do no wrong. When Negan kills someone, he is a sadistic murderer. When he bashed in the skulls of Abraham and Glenn, Walking Dead fans wanted his head and never saw the hypocrisy of praising Rick for killing and damning anyone else.
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That makes seeing Negan as anything less than the next Governor impossible for fans of The Walking Dead TV show. It also doesn’t help that the entire eighth season has worked to look more stylish and arty, with slow-motion, time-dissolves and more that takes the brutal and honest storyline and makes it more confusing than it needs to be.
It also gives a lot less time to explore the complex character that is Negan, the conflicted soul that belongs to Daryl Dixon, and what the sacrifice Carl made really means to the decisions that Rick has to make later this season.
While fans are not happy with the direction of the last two seasons, Norman Reedus feels that the second half of season 8 might work well in bringing some of the stories together for fans. Reedus spoke to EW and said that answers are coming during the rest of the season.
"“It’s all resolution. It’s all the tying up of these ends of what’s laid out in front of us in all these different directions. There’s a lot of closure coming in the back eight, which is great … Some wrap up the way you think. Some wrap up not the way you think.”"
It is important to realize that this is Norman Reedus talking and he has often defended The Walking Dead from fans who feel it is slipping in quality. Some of his past assurances never came to fruition, but there is hope that light might appear in the distance that will remind fans of why they fell in love with the show, to begin with.
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The Walking Dead is back on Sunday night, Feb. 25, at 8 p.m. CST.