Spoilers for The Walking Dead season 8 episode 8.

The mid season finale of The Walking Dead, The Way It’s Gotta Be, was a good episode overall but may have just doomed the show itself.
Coming into this episode, we all knew something big was going to happen, based on what the show runners said, and boy did it.
But maybe what happened was too big.
Because in this episode they actually set up the death of Carl Grimes.
Carl Grimes, the very future of The Walking Dead and they are going to kill him in the mid season premiere.
In the comics Carl has a hugely important story going forward and his very presence in both the comics and show defines who Rick is.
So, I believe that killing Carl was the worst possible decision they could have made because, without Carl, the story will no longer be as impactful.
The Walking Dead may have just doomed itself.

Another thing I did not like was the spoilers.
The Walking Dead is terrible at keeping secrets because so many important deaths have been spoiled.
Noah and Aiden’s deaths in season 5, spoiled.
Glenn and Abraham’s deaths in the season 7 premiere, spoiled.
And now we have Carl, which was also spoiled for me.
I do not even go looking for the spoilers, I just run into them on accident and then the show is ruined for me.
The show really needs to get a handle on the spoilers being leaked.
Then there was Ezekiel’s storyline, which I found to be pretty ridiculous, considering how Ezekiel was able to free all his people.
Although the one thing I did like about this storyline was how they humanized Gavin again.
Then there was the explosive bombing of Alexandria.
Am I the only one who found this to be not that impactful?
I do not know why but a lot of the action in season 8 has not felt very intense for me.
This is strange because in this episode we have multiple buildings exploding and yet I do not even feel thrilled by it.
However, this episode is not all bad.
I loved the storyline with Maggie and, despite how much I hate what they are doing with Carl, Chandler Riggs did a fantastic job this episode.
He easily delivered his best performance as Carl.
The best scene he was in was when his possibly final confrontation with Negan.
The Negan and Rick fight was also fun to see.

Like I said earlier, this was a good episode.
But the lack of excitement I felt during the action and the implications of Carl’s certain death left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I honestly do not think The Walking Dead can come back from this.
Well, at least I still have the comics.