The Audiences’ Opinions of the Mid-Season Finale of “The Walking Dead”

For those of you who haven't seen it as of yet, here’s a warning: this is article contains spoilers regarding The Walking Dead's mid-season finale which aired on AMC last Sunday. Anyway, the episode has been getting much hype online for months now. It would seem that it was leaked out that yet another beloved character was going to meet an unfortunate fate. So, viewers braced themselves, after all this it wouldn't be the first time this happened on this long running program. Since it began, other characters such as Shane, Laurie, Andrea, and Beth all died and some in shocking ways that left fans reeling. So, why should this one be any different. 

So, many fans tuned in to watch who it would be, after all the notorious villain from the comics the series is based on Negan makes his first appearance. Yes, the survivors had to deal with the diabolical Governor and now this guy isn't it enough they have to always contend with walkers coming after them. Anyway, back to who dies, was it Carol who is highly featured in this episode, was it Morgan who came to Carol's aid, was it Daryl, was it Rick? The answer, brace yourself for this one, no one knows for sure.

That's right, after all the hype, viewers were left with a cliffhanger and were met with an untimely end won't be answered till the show returns in October no doubt during fear fest. Needless to say this didn't go over too well with The Walking Dead Fans. Twitter and Facebook were all ablaze with comments that ranged from calling it a cop out to individuals saying they had it with the program. All the while AMC was no doubt sitting there going right see you in October.

The thing is, despite the outrage, The Walking Dead completed their task. People are talking about this episode and social media has been all the blaze. So what if some of its negatives are still banter, it seems that it’ll no doubt pay off for the cable network in the end.

Not the first time and certainly won't be the last time a program has gone this route. Keeping viewers hanging goes all the way back to when someone shot JR Ewing at the end of season 3 and kept viewers talking about it all through the summer. This was back in the 80s before social media or the Internet existed. Just imagine what a fire storm that would have caused. Then of course there were the fire storms caused by Game of Thrones, the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding and of course their notorious cliffhanger from last year with beloved character Jon Snow lying in the snow dying from a stab wound.

So, The Walking Dead isn't the first ones to take the shocking cliff hanger route and they won't be the last. No doubt viewers will continue talking for months on Facebook and Twitter contemplating who died as they’re right at the moment which again is pretty much what AMC wanted by leaving them hanging this way.