Way back when The Walking Dead season 8 first premiered, we gave it a pretty hard time. We weren't alone – there was a massive ratings drop that’s been steadily continuing ever since.
So why do we feel guilty? Well, because since season 9, when Scott Gimple handed over the showrunning reigns to Angela Kang, the show’s actually got good again. Like, really good.
So, forget season 8. And season 7. And most of 6 (look, let’s face it, this show hasn’t been the same since Negan bashed Glenn’s brains in with a baseball bat). It’s time to give The Walking Dead another chance. It’s slowly clawing its way of out of its narrative death-pit and has finally scooped up a handful of brains again.
Here’s how season 9 of The Walking Dead remembered how good it used to be.
A fresh start
Season 9 started with a two-year time jump, which has felt like coming up for air after being under the water for too long. By relegating previous seasons to the (relatively) distant past, the show has had a rebirth, with new challenges, new characters, and possibly the most important element of them all...
A renewed sense of hope
There’s no getting away from it, The Walking Dead got increasingly predictable with every new season. The structure saw our heroes go to a new place, face challenges, then that place would be destroyed by monster humans or human monsters, and the gang would move on.
What to Read Next
Season 9 introduces a new, larger, aim for our heroes: to rebuild civilisation. Rather than reacting to whatever was happening in the moment, the characters have a more significant endgame, one that balances each character’s wants and needs (the driving forces for all good narrative fiction), tying their arcs directly to genuinely interesting conflict.
It also creates greater sympathy for the cast. Rather than following the good-vs-evil pattern of previous seasons, season 9’s layered writing means we understand every character’s perspective even if we don’t agree with them.
And it’s brought a sense of hope that’s been all too absent from the last few, impossibly bleak seasons. And part of that comes from the...
Improved character dynamics
FINALLY. The best seasons of The Walking Dead did the opposite of Elvis Presley’s advice. They had little more conversation, a little less action. That’s because this show used to be a character study, putting people we recognise into an impossible situation to see how they coped. We fell in love with this series essentially because of the conversations, which were occasionally interrupted by a zombie jumping out of nowhere.
The highest-rated episodes of the show contain big action beats, though, which seemed to confuse Scott Gimple, who decided that’s what the audience wanted to see all the time. But the action only works if we care about the characters, which is where the whole talking thing comes in.
The All Out War plotline was intermittently exciting, but too much action becomes boring. Season 9 had its characters talking again, which came as a blessed relief. And that had another positive side effect…
It’s scary again
Here’s the thing about presenting us with a whole bunch of new and genuinely likeable characters: we don’t want to see them pulled apart into piles of meat. Imagine that!
All bets are off in terms of which new characters will survive, and with the old characters negotiating contracts left and right, no-one’s safe. This has increased the tension again, a much-missed element of what used to be a horror show (rather than a gore-fest).
The zombies are more consistent and the new human villains, the Whisperers, are absolutely chilling, with a genuinely different dynamic to anything we’ve seen on the series before. Samantha Morton is mesmerising as leader Alpha, and it makes us genuinely sad that so many fans didn’t stick around to see her stunning performance.
Oh, and Daryl’s got a dog
We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.
Basically any show or film will be improved by the addition of a dog. So, thank you Angela Kang for finally granting Norman Reedus’ desire for Daryl Dixon to get a good-boy buddy, it’s improved our enjoyment of The Walking Dead by approximately 100 per cent.
It’s also symbolic of how grounded the show’s got – Dixon could have had a pet tiger, lion or bear if this had been one of the earlier seasons. But season 9 knows to keep things simple, and that’s why we love it. However, we should make it clear that if they kill the dog, we riot.
So, pick up season 9 and binge-watch it as soon as possible, because if season ten continues on this trajectory, it could be the best yet. You know, as long as the incoming 'Whisperer War' doesn't undo all of the last season's good work.
The Walking Dead airs on AMC in the US and on FOX in the UK. You can also catch up on the show via NOW TV.
![The Walking Dead The Complete Seasons 1-10 Boxset [DVD] [2021]](https://hips.hearstapps.com/vader-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1641396648-51p56wQDuzS._SL500_.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:* "The Walking Dead The Complete Seasons 1-10 Boxset [DVD] [2021]")
![Fear The Walking Dead The Complete Seasons 1-6 Boxset [DVD] [] [2020]](https://hips.hearstapps.com/vader-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1641396723-51D5TpwavLL._SL500_.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:* "Fear The Walking Dead The Complete Seasons 1-6 Boxset [DVD] [] [2020]")
![The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 1 [DVD] [2020]](https://hips.hearstapps.com/vader-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1641396771-51dps9qaknL._SL500_.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:* "The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 1 [DVD] [2020]")
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.
Freelancer writer
Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist.
Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets.
He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more.
Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions.
Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time.
His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others.
In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them.
Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best.
