'The Walking Dead' Season 10 Episode 12's back-to-basics approach makes for the best episode of the season
Spoilers for 'The Walking Dead' Season 10 Episode 12 'Walk With Us'
When you have 10 seasons of a TV series, it's going to grow and shift and veer away from what it was when the series began. It's a necessary part of any long-running story to keep it from feeling too repetitive. The survivors of 'The Walking Dead' have come a long way and are no longer fighting just for survival, but for a future and that's vital. With 'Walk With Us,' however, the destruction of the hilltop base and the scattering of the survivors allows the show to take a back-to-basics approach for an episode and it serves as a reminder as to what made the show so compelling to begin with.
'Walk With Us' has a lot of classic moments that make for good zombie storytelling. Some of the stand out moments were Earl Sutton (John Finn) finding out he's been bitten and having to kill himself for the good of the group before the infection sets in; Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) losing her innocence in a world that has no room for that sort of thing; Gamma's (Thora Birch) sacrifice play, leading the zombies away from the others so that they can live on and the cherry on the cake, a last-minute twist in with a game-changing betrayal.
The old mixes in with the new, as we have a fair amount of progression with the Whisperers as well. Beta's (Ryan Hurst) identity is teased and we get a close look into the inner workings of Alpha's (Samantha Morton) mind, just in time to say goodbye to her on the show. It's all kept away from the war and the larger hopes of the community the survivors have built. Though they're trying to stick together, the aftermath of the Whisperer's invasion of the hilltop has reminded the survivors just what it felt like to not have the protection of civilization around them.
It's started to feel like the walkers are only a real threat when they're in a herd, but with the scattered survivors, even just a handful of them prove they can still be a potent threat. After all, the fact that it only takes one bite from them before a person's life is over never really went away - it just grew slowly less relevant.
'The Walking Dead' is not what it was - the survivors' goals have shifted drastically since the show's beginning. Every once in a while though, an episode like 'Walk With Us' acts as a refreshing look back at everything that got people so hooked on to 'The Walking Dead' to begin with.
The next episode of 'The Walking Dead' airs on March 22, on AMC.