The Walking Dead will soon premier season five, but let us rate and recap the previous seasons prior to the start of the new one.
Season 1 – 9/10: Season one is, of course, the season that immediately hooked everyone to the show. With Rick’s mission to find his family, multitudinous amount of zombie kills, and unexpected character deaths, it is safe to say that season one was packed with plenty of action. There was a mission, a goal, early in the season. Everyone wanted Rick to find his family and was glued to their TV sets to see if he does.
After Rick reunited with his family and joined the group that contained his best friend and former partner, Shane, the camp got attacked by a herd of walkers. During this attack, many beloved characters died, such as Amy, Andrea’s sister, and Jim. Amy’s death was devastating because she was a young, innocent girl with good morals. Even though Jim was a bit awkward, he, too, was an asset to the group. At least Carol’s jerk husband, Ed, died during the attack, which made many viewers very happy.
Season one was definitely a terrific season because it had a mixture of character build up and loads of zombie deaths. The season was short, but sweet.
Season 2 – 9.5/10: This season was probably the best one because there was a lot of character build up, which is what the series is mostly about. The Walking Dead is a show about people with zombies in it, not a show about zombies with people in it (look behind the scenes of The Walking Dead). To this writer, it is more enjoyable to learn about characters and what they will do in order to survive, rather than look an hour of zombies being killed.
In this season, we witness a couple of character changes, a shocking revelation, and were introduced to new survivors, Hershel, Beth, and Maggie. Daryl, who was delineated as a shrewd, careless bastard in the first season, changed into the caring, fun-loving, tough guy that most fans have grown to love now. Daryl was really the only one who made a strong effort to look for Carol’s lost daughter, Sophia. Although there were still times where Daryl showed signs of his old self from season one, he was, for the most part, a new person, one that became more attached to the group and Rick’s right hand man.
Shane was little more caring and calm in the first season, but he changed a whole lot in the second one, especially after Otis’ death. Shane turned into a monster as the season prolonged. He became a cold, careless liar, but there were many times where he knew what he was doing, but was doing it to oppose Rick's decision-making. Shane became his own worst enemy and forced his way to death. He was definitely one of the main reasons why season two was extremely entertaining because he was the cause of all the drama and was a ferocious character.
Lastly, there was the shocking twist of Sophia’s death. The whole first portion of the season was spent looking for Sophia, but she was dead the whole time and locked up in Hershel’s barn. The entire scene, where Sophia walked out the barn as a walker in episode 7, was emotional and, to some viewers, unexpected.
Season two, along with Hershel’s farm, will certainly be missed.
Season 3 – 7/10: Season three started off strong with the group locating and taking over the prison and running into survivors at the prison. In this season, Rick lost Lori but gained a daughter, Judith. We also lost another highly favored character, T-Dog, who went out as a hero. All this happened in the first four episodes, and then the season had its ups and downs.
There was also a surprise as we found out that Merle, Daryl’s brother, who was handcuffed to a pole on the roof of a department store and was later found missing in season one, was alive and well with one hand missing because he chopped it off to get costless himself from the roof he was stranded on.
In this season, we were introduced to The Governor and his town, Woodbury. We quickly found out that he was a cruel man who, with his lies, was able to fascinate and control the 70-plus people in Woodbury. As the season continued, Rick’s group and The Governor crossed paths a few times and soon became a threat to each other. The latter half of the season was spent on the preparation for an all-out battle between the sides.
However, the biggest disappointment was that, after spending a handful of episodes preparing for a huge battle, The Governor’s group backed out and ran off, leading to The Governor killing all his troops and running off with his two best comrades, Shumpert and Caesar Martinez. The only emotional and important part was that Andrea, who was left behind in season two and joined Woodbury, died in end.
Season three was not one of the best seasons as the ending was not too satisfying, but a few key characters did die. We were also introduced to new characters, Michonne, Tyreese, and Sasha.
Season 4 – 8/10: Season four started off slowly as it showed us that the group had grown and made a lot of advancements at the prison, such as establishing a farm, creating a library for the kids, and acquiring plenty of food and supplies. There was not much action, until people began to get sick.
The illness spread throughout the prison and even affected Glenn and Sasha. However, thanks to Daryl, Michonne, Tyreese, and Bob looting some medicine, most of the people, including Glenn and Sasha, were slowly being cured. Another major event that happened was Rick kicking Carol out of the group because she murdered Karen, Tyreese’s girlfriend, who was the first one to become ill.
Furthermore, season four saw The Governor return with a whole new army, and the highly anticipated all-out battle between Rick’s group and The Governor finally took place, ending with Hershel’s head being chopped off, The Governor being killed by Michonne, the prison being destroyed, and the group being split.
The season picked up from there on as we started to see more character development when the group was split. Also, there was a new goal for everyone; follow the train tracks and find Terminus. And that is where we are at now, with the group trapped in a train cart in Terminus.
Season four finished off strong and left us begging for more. We were also introduced to three new characters, Sargent Abraham Ford, Rosita, and Eugene, who were on a mission to get to Washington D.C. to find a cure that would put a stop to this, but were sidetracked by Terminus.
Season five should be an amazing one as it looks like the group is finally going to travel to Washington D.C. Looking at the trailers, there seems to be lots of zombie kills and hopefully character build up. Tune into AMC on Sunday, October 12 at 9 pm Eastern Time to look the season five premier, followed by the premier of Talking Dead.
