‘The Walking Dead’ Retro Recap: ‘Start to Finish’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

The more we continue our journey back through season six of the AMC series, The Walking Dead, the more it is becoming apparent that this really was a season of storytelling designed to shake things up and really test audiences like never before. Because outside of ‘Here’s Not Here’, the first half of this season… was filled to brim with dark and powerful and intense stories. The kind that toyed with our emotions and featured brutal assaults on our senses, courtesy of a resurgent villain in the walking dead themselves. Since their numbers and wild hunger wrought havoc upon Alexandria and well, it is also clear that season six wasn’t planning on slowing down anytime soon regarding that intensity, as evidenced by its midseason finale.
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For ‘Start to Finish’ was another nightmarishly intense tale. One that saw the worst-case scenario come to fruition since the walking dead quickly entered Alexandria the instant that wall fell and that brought forth sheer terror and chaos into this oasis/sanctuary. Since the dead quickly overwhelmed everyone and forced them into their homes, not to mention… claimed the life of their leader. Since Deanna was bitten during the desperate push to get off the streets, leading to her end any way you slice it, and seeing the dead en masse in this idyllic town and watching everyone look at this situation with sheer shock only added to the intensity, and made it clear how dangerous this world still is beyond those walls and how it kept finding ways to test our heroes.

But where this episode truly shined, was by once again giving us a chance to see how fear can bring forth so much chaos and trouble. Since Ron’s fear of losing everything basically brought the living dead into his living room. All because he really couldn’t handle the reality that others had accepted, once again reminding us of how easily the living dead took over the world, while also putting everyone in quite the precarious place. Since the only way out of this nightmare was to go with ‘Guts’ protocol and try and slink past the horde. A move that is as eerie and scary now as it was back then, and the cliffhanger that came out of that, still has gravitas since no good can come out of making noise in the midst of a massive and starving herd.

Yet the darkness and complexities of human behavior in a crisis didn’t end there. Since Carol discovered Morgan’s secret Alexandria guest and that brought them to blows and desperation and eventually… failure. Since the Wolf used the chaos to gain the upper hand and even after staring down the barrel of several guns from Rosita’s survivor camp, he was able to grab Denise and head into the herd, another move that unsettles one’s soul. But what mattered more here, is that this infighting and Morgan’s suggestion to leave this be for now, helps to remind us of how often personal agenda comes into play during a crisis moment, for reasons we don’t fully understand, and outright complicates everything. And had Carol taken his advice and waited, disaster could have been averted.

However, while all of that would have been enough to carry this episode, it still had one more surprise to send our way. Since that post-credits sequence finally properly introduced us to the trouble ahead since those fine ‘gents’ explained their position and the position of Negan. A moment that now has ten times the gravity, since we are fully aware of what that name means in this segment of the story. In the end however, this was simply a bleak and intense tale through and through. One that hammered home the nature of season six and back in the day, left us worried about who might suffer their end in that sea of living death and well, the good news is… we don’t have to wait all that much longer to revisit that, since the midseason premiere awaits. Until next time.

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