Small Screen Favorites: The Walking Dead Season Finale

Season 7 of The Walking Dead has been perhaps its weakest yet, with declining ratings and unfavorable reviews plaguing it throughout. So it was up to the season finale to stick the landing at least reasonably well. Does "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life" accomplish this goal? I would say yes, to a certain degree.

If it counts for anything, it is at least refreshing to have an episode that actually features the entire cast. Although it makes for a bit of an overcrowded experience with some (Carol and Morgan in particular) not getting quite as much screen time as they deserve, I'll take what I can get considering just how frustrating it was to see our group so split up over the course of this season. Hopefully, given how this episode ends, Season 8 will deliver more of these large-scale episodes in the future instead of just focusing on one storyline per episode.

And yes, there is both action and death in this finale, but it comes after nearly forty minutes of sometimes frustratingly slow buildup. After a while it begins to feel as if the same conversations and themes are being repeated over and over again with no real point except to pad out the running time. Fortunately, when the big battle finally comes, it does deliver. There are just enough suspenseful and heroic moments to make the very long wait feel worth it. There are also plenty of good character moments to be seen here, particularly from Andrew Lincoln (Rick), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan), and Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha) having the strongest moments.

While Season 7 was largely disappointing, it did give us a handful of memorable episodes, and this was one of them. It certainly dragged in parts, probably due to being ninety minutes instead of the usual sixty, but it benefited from an exciting final sequence and barrage of great character moments that ends the season on a positive note. Although the string of mediocre episodes that we received this year make me skeptical about Season 8's quality, I will say that on its own this episode was worth the watch. I would award it 4/5 stars.