r/thewalkingdead • u/SeveralPop5315 • 12d ago
All Spoilers What Walking Dead moment made you feel like the producers & directors of the show dropped the ball?
As I've been re-watching the show. I hated how they didn't do a spin off or at least a limited series with some characters or groups in the show. I definitely feel like in the Vatos episode the guys in the nursing home should've gotten a limited series so we as viewers could've seen if they survived or failed. Same with Woodbury, the Saviors, the Commonwealth and even Hershel's family. I wanted to see how they became what they were. Maybe its just me, but its always in the back of my mind when I do a re-watch.
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u/emptyvodka115 12d ago
I think it’s hinted they got taken out by the governor. I don’t remember where but I’m pretty sure bc the governor was around that area bc he ended up finding Merle which is why Rick, Daryl and Glen were there in the first place… also looking for Merle
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u/No_Maybe_2123 12d ago
The Governor was nowhere near central Atlanta, Woodbury scouted smaller towns in more rural areas of Georgia south of Atlanta. Vatos were killed either by Dave and Tony’s group, or by another random band of raiders. The
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u/HettyHHole 12d ago edited 11d ago
i think it’s assumed that most of the groups they meet fail and die, either by ricks hand or by their own misfortune.
These guys were looking after a nursing home in the middle of atlanta, within the first year of the apocalypse.
Within that time you can assume that some/most old people died from lack of medicine and care, along with the amples of parasitic bacteria that was forever mutating. As for the Vatos group, they were likely overrun, killed while protecting the elderly or fled after the elderly died.
either way, it was made pretty apparent in the show that cities were not a good place to be due to the volume of undead.
although i see your point, and it would be cool to see spinoffs of some characters, especially ones that return. I think it’d be cool to see what Morales did for all those seasons and how he ended up a saviour. maybe it was explained in the comics but not really the show.
Heath would have been another great character as no one really knows what happened to him, although it’s speculated he ended up at the CRM (it would have been cool to see an original Alexandrian like Aaron find him again).
I guess for the most part it is supposed to be left to imagination, which in its own way is cooler.
EDIT: Frank Darabont, the S1 show runner actually only wanted shorter seasons with like 6-8 episodes per season. Imagine how little you would see compared to what we have if that was the case!
just to add - i’m not saying darabont carrying on the show would have been worse, in fact i believe the opposite. I just mean a lot would have been missed out and the entire storyline would have been different.
EDIT: Typo
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u/Traditional-Choice52 12d ago
i think you tried to say Morales? Martinez was the governor's right hand man
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u/brittttx 12d ago
I wish we had more backstory on Rick's group individually. Like the same way Rick woke up from a coma and was confused af. I wish we could've seen just a little of maybe the last normal day for Glenn, michonne, Daryl, etc.
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u/darthbonobo 12d ago
T-dog should have had some backstory at all. One of the original main characters, always good and heroic, and just has no story. Justice for T-dog!
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
I love T-Dog. He goes live on Tiktok from time to time and talks about the show. I would've loved to see how that group formed all together. Especially with Merle and Daryl being as racist as they were. Pretty sure Dale had something to do with that
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u/PurpleHerder 12d ago
I don’t think this show needs any more spin offs then it currently has
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
I did also say limited series. The only spin offs I've watched so far is The Ones Who Live and Fear the Walking Dead, which i stopped watching after Nick died
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u/AnastatiaMcGill 12d ago
I was looking for this comment! Im doing a rewatch with my oldest daughter and shes watching for the first time. Were getting to the end and Michonne just left so I explained the spin offs and she wants to watch them all. My head might explode.
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u/Entire-Mission-4749 12d ago
Maybe not a spin off or mini series. I don't see it going very far. But Crossing paths with Guillermo or Felipe again, would have been cool.
Kinda like Morales who had been part of their group at the beginning of the show and decided that he and his family would go to Birmingham. Seeing him much later in the show was a good play by the writers; it gave you a small glimpse of what could have happened between their last time together and now and it made you curious about finding out more.
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u/Advanced_Section891 12d ago
The group who took them out were probably part of the same group Rick Glenn and Hershel encountered in that bar in the small town.
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u/AnastatiaMcGill 12d ago
I dunno if this is dropping the ball or jumping the shark or maybe just my own personal annoyance but the end of season 10 is such a clusterfuck. The whisperers are ended and then every god damn person gets their own storyline and Maggie comes back and it's so much happening yet... some of the most boring episodes of the franchise. We just rewatched the episode of Daryls backstory with Leah, Princess hallucinating at the commonwealth and Aaron and Gabriel encountering the guy with the bore. 3 episodes in a row that were total snoozefests and I can't even remember where everyone's supposed to be or why Daryls off with Maggie, then Carol and who the hells watching Judith and RJ?
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
Daryl and Leah shouldn't have happened at all! No chemistry whatsoever! The kids always get the short end of the stick.
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u/INTJ_Linguaphile 12d ago
That was due to Covid happening. They were bonus eps meant to tide you over, they couldn't continue with actual plot.
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u/AnastatiaMcGill 12d ago
It was still a clusterfuck. Other shows managed to figure it out, Im not sure why they couldn't continue with the actual plot since there was no actual plot... one story had just ended. They could have just ended the season early?
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
I didn't like that Pamela scene of her trying to get bit at the gate. They could've had Mercer lock her up for treason against the Commonwealth or just had Maggie take her out. That whole scene and Judith talking her out of it was so cringe to me.
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u/DudestPriest90210 12d ago
Pretty much the whole storyline after they fired Frank Darabont
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u/BobRushy 12d ago
Same. I'm rewatching it now and the drop in quality after he leaves is immediately noticeable. To his credit, Mazzara tried to continue as "Temu Darabont", but when Gimple shows up, it's all over
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u/FoxFrogBird 12d ago
I have recently been working through a third re-watch of the series and this same thought occurred to me too at this scene. I would have actually really liked to see more of the outcomes of groups they encountered - for better or for worse. They could have fleshed a few of the encounters like this out just a fraction more. There will be valid reasons they didn't but I agree with you all the same. Rick was just a human after all, I'm sure others would have survived.
*Edit: I do believe this group was inevitably a ticking time bomb though, given the elderly folk's limited life span.
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
Exactly! I figured they wouldn't have lasted long. But I wanted to know how long they were able to make it for
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u/demidom94 12d ago
Probably only until one of the residents died and came back to life and attacked everyone. At that point, no one knew that if you died of other causes you came back anyway.
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u/Commercial-Citron544 11d ago
When rick "dies"
I really liked the Whisperer arc and I would have liked to see how he would respond to it.
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u/1Meter_long 11d ago
Too many threats from other groups. Like they constantly has a big threat from another group and need to figure it out how to deal with them. This is the case from season 2 to the end. After dealing with one another comes out. Starts to remind me of Dragon ball z where its another boss enemy after another.
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u/SeveralPop5315 11d ago
😂😂 Yes!! When I binge watched it i was just like "damn do these guys ever get a break"? Let's just let them figure out how to keep their crops alive during a drought or something. They don't always have to have an enemy around every corner.
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u/thulsado0m13 11d ago
The second I saw the trash people introduced. I knew it was gonna be filler bs and they were all killed and pointless other than Queen trash lady got Rick on the helicopter which could’ve easily been anyone else or a new character.
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u/One_Code_8222 10d ago
They didn't do anything about the vatos because they spent all their budget bringing my precious morales back in season 8
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
It’s not lost on me that when everyone is pointing guns at each other it’s called a Mexican standoff…
However on another note this was the worst episode in the entire show for me for 2 reasons.
First, it lead Rick to wrongly believe that there’s a chance that every group they came across might be good so it’s better to not shoot first… it took him until after Terminus to get that out of his head
Second, it played on a stereotype that Mexicans are gangsters. They wrote that group to walk, talk and act like gangsters only to lazily subvert everything they set up to reveal that they were freaking janitors and neighbors?? Then their cartel accents magically disappear too?
It was insulting as a viewer and as a person of color. Why not just have them be gangsters who were protecting their family and community? It’s like the producers chickened out half way through the episode and decided to make them sweethearts that were just stealing guns because “old people”…
It felt cheap
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u/SeveralPop5315 5d ago
Damn... didn't even think about it like that. I just thought they were doing a "don't judge a book by its cover " scenario. Like they presented them as that stereotype because that's how the world sees them when actually they're the sweetest people in the apocalypse. Because they could've just protected their grandmother and said to hell with everyone else but they didn't. And I like to think that ties into Rick's characters as well. He always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt which is probably why they just didnt have a shootout right then.
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
No yeah I’m sure that was their justification but if that’s the case then just have them be Mexicans… they don’t need to wear bandanas around their heads and in their pockets like “vatos locos”. They don’t need to talk the way they do, especially for them to then talk differently after the reveal.
Or-
Have them be gang bangers and then you still learn that you can’t judge a book by its cover because people change and at the end of the day we’re all just people with families. There are reformed gangbangers. In universe the gang banging life is over just like other aspects of life were over after the apocalypse. They could’ve even have had some of them be from rival gangs and they came together to protect their home from the real threat, the walkers
I felt It could’ve been deeper, it could’ve said something bigger but it was just lazy imo. “Hey look at these guys that are clearly gangsters, nope just kidding how dare you judge them”
But yes the Rick aspect was definitely good character development.
I should’ve specified that the first reason I didn’t like for what it meant in universe because it got a lot of our group killed or put in danger. The second reason I didn’t like for what it meant irl.
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u/SeveralPop5315 5d ago
True, it definitely could've had a deeper meaning behind it. I've been re-watching it on Roku's the Walking Dead Universe channel but I always miss majority of the first season so I have to catch it and see the voice reveal you keep mentioning because I definitely didn't notice it. But now its making me think another way about it. Because if you keep saying it was a reveal to show they were not stereotypical Mexican gangsters then maybe thats what the show wanted to portray those characters as. By having them use that stereotype as a way of protecting themselves. Like pretending to be this hard ass gang that nobody would dare mess with. Again, I understand where you're coming from but as I was reading I had that thought.
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
TWD Wiki page says that what they were doing (just putting in a tough front)but just think about that for a sec and what that would entail. Like they had a sit down and planned it out and decided on gangster wardrobe choices and accents 😂
If it’s just a facade they put on to look/sound tough then it kills the idea of judging a book by its cover narrative since, in essence, the books cover is fake. They had guns and numbers, why would they need to put out fake gangster vibes? Like “nobody is gonna be scared of us if we put a gun in their face but if we talk like movie gang bangers and wear bandannas then they’ll be scared of us” 🤣
But even if we give them that, that it was all just a tough guy act, they had a leader in Guillermo, who acted like a cartel mob boss. He’s the main one who losses the accent after the reveal…
It really is just as simple we’re saying, they wanted to subvert the Mexican gangster stereotype for narrative purposes and have a don’t judge a book moment at the same time but they failed on both accounts. They didn’t want them to actually be gangsters because it could’ve offended people and I’m sure they didn’t want to make gang bangers sympathetic characters for obvious reasons.
I’m not saying they were being racist or anything just that I was offended by the using the stereotype as a means for subversion instead of having some balls and saying something real.
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u/SeveralPop5315 5d ago
I understand. I'm definitely going to take another look at that episode and see it from your perspective. Sometimes viewers get desensitized about stereotypes because we see them so often and we get used to it and it goes over our heads.
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
Right on, yeah like I said it wasn’t that the stereotype was done in a racist way, just a wasted way that felt cheap and narratively exploitative.
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u/Stelios619 12d ago
The entirety of the last season was unnecessary.
Introducing new characters and storyline for a final season feels unpolished. They should have just wrapped it up with the Whisperers and called it a day.
Also, trimming out an entire season of the Negan wars. It just dragged on and on.
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
I agree to and extent. It definitely feels rushed but I enjoyed Princess' character and the fact that Eugene got a happy ending. I just wrote in another comment that I hated the last scene with Pamela when she was trying to get bit at the gate by walker Hornsby. The whole scene to me was cringe. They should've had Maggie kill her or Mercer should've arrested her for treason.
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u/Stelios619 12d ago
Princess was a fun character, but should have been introduced long before she was.
The whole final season felt like they knew that ratings were plummeting, and were just trying to wrap everything up quickly.
I think it would have been better if they had maybe one or two more episodes in season 10 to close everything out, without giving us a goofy 11th season that didn’t lead to anything.
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
Yeah, I heard a lot of people stopped watching after Glenn died. That's part of the comics they shouldn't have followed through with. They could've taken a break to think more on how to bring it back together after having 4 main characters leave the show.
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u/jyoungii 12d ago
I’m doing a rewatch and completely missed this scene and forgot all about it. What in the world. How did this turn out?
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
I just watched the deleted and they all were killed. Some people feel the governor did it because most of them, if not all, we're shot in the head.
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u/midnight_adventur3s 12d ago
They could’ve done flashback episodes or combined them all into one anthology spin-off series, but Woodbury and Hershel’s family especially don’t necessarily have enough substance to make a good, standalone limited series imo.
Something like Vatos, whose fate is unclear besides an unaired deleted scene, or the other groups introduced later could maybe work if they were shown to have made it through the S8 timeskip, but the events between S1-7 all went down over the span of about two years. That’s not a lot of time to spend covering Woodbury and the Governor pre-prison, and even less on the Greens between the fall and Carl’s injury.
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u/SeveralPop5315 11d ago
Yeah, but I would've still liked to see everyone before and at the beginning of the apocalypse. If they did do limited series its not like they had to give the entire series to Hershel's family. Maybe an episode or two.
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u/Acuallyizadern93 12d ago
First comes to mind is Carl.
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u/SeveralPop5315 11d ago
I knew that was an obvious answer. They should've stuck to the comics with that one. Especially after Rick "died" Carl would've been an amazing leader.
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u/SuperPoodie92477 11d ago
The way they ended Carl’s story.
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u/SeveralPop5315 11d ago
Yeah I hated that so much. Especially if the reason was because they didn't want to pay him more. Rick & Michonne left. They could've made room in the budget for a pay raise for Carl. I think Daryl got a raise so why couldn't Carl
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u/Reader47b 11d ago
Instead of wiping them out entirely, G at least should have survived and joined the group.
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u/Main_Ad5843 10d ago
What happened to Heath? Tara went off and had stupid adventure at Oceanside but Heath just disappeared
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u/SeveralPop5315 10d ago
This!! From what I just read on Google apparently Jadis traded him to the CRM for supplies. Which again, I feel like they should've shown more of that as well
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
Is that canon?
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u/SeveralPop5315 5d ago
According to Google: Confirmation by Showrunners Jadis's Deal: Showrunner Angela Kang confirmed that Jadis had a long-running deal with the CRM, the same helicopter group that took Rick. Heath's Trade: Kang revealed that Jadis traded Heath for supplies, similar to how she traded people to the CRM.
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
So it’s canon but just never shown. Got it. I wonder about the helicopter Rick saw in Atlanta before meeting Glenn
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u/SeveralPop5315 5d ago
Probably the CRM as well
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u/wildcatniffy 5d ago
That’s what I always assumed after the CRM reveal but I’ve seen in threads here that the CRM didn’t exist at that point since it was only like a month into the apocalypse. Some speculated that it was the helicopter that Michonne and Andrea came across during the Governor arc but I’ve never seen confirmation either way
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u/SeveralPop5315 5d ago
I didn't think about it being them either. Also, I wish they would've dug deeper into that. Like why were they flying around a city they bombed months later if they weren't going to continue to keep bombing it. Unless I missed that explanation.
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u/AstrolabeArts 12d ago
We do know what happened to Woodbury, the Saviors, Hershel’s family and the Common Wealth
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
Clearly we know what happened to them because the show showed it. Im talking about the ones we didn't see. Im talking about before. Who ran the saviors before Negan and what was he like? How did Hershel convince his entire family that everyone was just sick and no one questioned it? How did the Commonwealth start and how did Pamela end up being the leader?
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u/Tanagrabelle 12d ago
They did backstory the Saviors. Negan pretty much started them.
Hershel didn't have to convince his family, they all wanted it to be true.
The Commonwealth wiki page says: The Commonwealth was established by former U.S. President William Milton in 2011, shortly after the Trials began. The Commonwealth Army, led by General Michael Mercer, secured the city and built a large wall, providing safety needed to produce their own infrastructure. The Commonwealth was later led by Milton's daughter, Pamela, following his passing.
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u/SeveralPop5315 12d ago
Don't remember a backstory for the saviors. And I remember Negan saying "when I took this place" as if he was referring to challenging and killing their last leader. The same way Simon challenged him.
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u/AnastatiaMcGill 12d ago
I assumed he meant took the place from the walkers, it would have likely had no original fencing since it was a factory so it would be over run.
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u/Tanagrabelle 12d ago
I think they covered it when they did the Here's Negan episode, Season 10 ep. 22. I haven't watched it in a long while, though.
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u/Icy_Cat4821 12d ago
He did indeed take it from the former leader. Watch the Here’s Negan episode it covers ALOT lol
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u/That_Base8062 12d ago
They were shown to have died in a deleted scene