'After this, I'm following YOU' ~ a few thoughts on the first half of #TheWalkingDead, Season 8

I always find that when I watch TWD episodes for the second time, I enjoy them much more.  I think this is because they are so well put together, with so many subtleties that I don't always catch the first time round.  This season is no different.  

'After this, I'm following YOU'.  You so will be, Rick....

This week I watched the last three episodes again: How It's Gotta Be, Time For After, and The King, The Widow and Rick (click titles for my reviews), and saw so many clues that Carl had been bitten that I'm surprised I was so surprised.  His face when he got up from the Walker attack, out in the wood with Sadiq, and the blood on his side.  All that profound stuff he started saying, the letters he wrote sitting in the corner of his room in Alexandria, the sad look at the JSS note from Enid.  Or perhaps it should be BSS; the rare Bob Stookey Syndrome, in which a bite does not turn a good guy into a Walker for at least 24 hours.

Then there was his seemingly reckless determination to save his friends with his own plan, the way he was staggering and limping more as he set fire to their home and, of course, his brave suggestion to Negan that if he must let Lucille have her way with one of them, that it should be him.

Then I went back and watched Episodes 1 & 2 again (it's a great way to spend a dark Wednesday afternoon!).  They were not just a mass of gun fights ~ the whole plan was so well put together.  I loved the reminders of earlier days in the first episode ~ and I don't just mean the petrol can. I'd forgotten that Carl had with him the orange backpack, once the property of the man who chased him, Rick and Michonne in S3:12 'Clear' ('Stop! I'm begging you!' ~ remember?).

The backpack was also one of the visual clues at Terminus, that made Rick realise all was not as it should be; Glenn had taken it when he escaped the destroyed prison.

Then there was the aerial shot of the trailer where Gabriel was trapped with Negan ~ an echo of S6:3: 'Thank You', when Rick got surrounded in the RV by Walkers, and when Glenn was trapped under a bin/Nicholas.  And the tank in S1:1.  Don't forget the tank.

I think that in the second half of S8 we will see the Rise of Maggie, particularly as Rick is likely to lose it, big style, if Carl really does die (and I have still not given up on him being the first immune!).  Although I was a great fan of Glenn-And-Maggie, she's never been a favourite character of mine, but I loved how she shot the Saviour without thinking twice, not allowing her frailty to show until she walked away.  She looked like the old Maggie when she cried, the farmer's daughter who fell in love with Glenn; Hershel's daughter and Beth's sister.

Then we have Michonne, Rosita, Tara and, of course, the woman who never fails to keep her head when all about them are losing theirs (or throwing their toys out of the pram, in the case of Ezekiel) ~ the ever fab Carol.  Maybe it's time for the girls to take over!

Carol, do what you did at Terminus....

RIP Francine, Andy, Eric, Danie, Freddie.... and Carl?

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