In retrospect, how refreshing was it to have the majority of death and stress front-loaded in Sunday's The Walking Dead midseason premiere? I'm not sure how to process how uplifting and inspiring that episode was — weird. Still, we have to pay homage to those we lost, as Jessie, Sam, and Ron died on The Walking Dead in one action-packed moment.
The episode picked up right where we left off last year. Rick, Michonne, Carl, Jessie, and her family were cloaked in guts and calmly moving to safety through the Walker horde. Gabriel broke off to take Judith to safety — at least somebody's thinking about that baby. Later on, however, all Hell broke loose when little Sam started to freak out.
This was set up last year as well. Jessie's youngest son, having experienced most of the apocalypse from inside the walls of Alexandria, does not have much experience with zombies. When his house was first attacked, he hid upstairs and refused to cross the threshold into the "reality" of the trauma that had happened with the "monsters" down below. So when seeing those "monsters" all around him became too much, Sam stopped walking and began to panic, causing the Walkers around him to attack him. As soon as he was bit, Jessie started to scream and got attacked as well. This is all very similar to what happened in The Walking Dead comics — down to Jessie's hand.
Ron was the next to kick the bucket, but not because the Walkers had gotten him. He tried to kill Rick, but found himself on the end of Michonne's sword before he could. That scene served as a microcosm for how people died and/or changed in the apocalypse: some aren't cut out, some can think on their feet, and some are more dangerous than the Walkers themselves.
I was actually starting to like Jessie, but I'm not going to miss this storyline on The Walking Dead too much, to be honest. It was nice that Rick had a love interest, but I'm ready to move on. Plus, their deaths seemed to help inspire the people of Alexandria to finally rise up, which will undoubtedly send Season 6 in an exciting direction.
Image: Gene Page/AMC
