Gimple, in the first few moments of Talking Dead, turned directly to the camera and jokingly addressed the roughly 14.2 million viewers worldwide who were still recovering from the shocking cliffhanger ending: We looked back at the screen, at the credits silently rolling.Īll at once, the entirety of TWD fandom exploded into a fury of social media posts, pics, bitching, fuming, theories, debates, expletives as to who lost that fatal round of Negan’s “Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.” On the black screen, final credits began to roll. “Oh, ho, ho, look at that! Taking it like a champ!”Īnd, we watched, in doomed horror and finality, as Jeffrey Dean Negan brought Lucille up one more time, with a flourish, over his victim’s head, over all of our heads, and with all his might and fury, brought the spiked bat down, and that is the last thing we saw, before the screen went black, and only the wet, dead, horrible sounds of the final blows remained, each one ringing out in the blackness, each one causing us to flinch, to wince. It was as if we, the viewers, were on our knees, right in there amongst Rick and the others, bracing ourselves for the blows as Jeffrey Dean Negan brought Lucille down, hard, again, and again, and again, until the camera lens ran red with fake blood, and the camera veered crazily, falling sideways as it were we who struggled to right ourselves after the first blow… to stay alive, even for one moment longer.Īnd, when Jeffery Dean Negan bent forward, delighted, and peered into the camera lens, to study his victim’s face, it was as if he were studying our faces as he doubled over, laughing, pointing, mocking: It’s been 3 months + since that scene, since those harrowing final 15 minutes of Episode 616 bludgeoned our collective skulls, and left us gaping, speechless as we watched Jeffrey Dean Negan gleefully bash an as-yet-unknown member of our sweet gang ( from the first-person perspective, the poor victim’s point of view) to their violent, brutal, bloody death at the hands of a merciless foe, and his barbaric weapon-of-choice: Lucille, a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.

😀Īnd, here is the supremely awesome first official TWD S7 poster, which we will be deconstructing a bit later in this post, as we discuss my personal guesses as to who may have gotten the bat… but, more on that, later! ❤ Now, thank the gods, summer’s here, about half way through by now, and while some aspects of my world haven’t slowed down much, others have.įinally, I find myself more able to create spaces of time to steal away for some focused hours at the laptop, so we can hash it all out about TWD’s harrowing, iconic Season 6 finale episode, Ep 616, “Last Day on Earth.”Īnd just in time, too, as the #SDCC2016 is less than a week away, as is the #TWDSDCC2016 panel, which, of course, will include the premiere showing of the official TWD Season 7 trailer. Some of the adulting was super fun, some of it sucked ass….but, hey, that’s how adulting goes. This spring threw a lot of life my way, at great rate, and I have been “adulting” like a mother, both literally and figuratively, since the TWD Season 6 finale aired and rocked TWD fandom like a hurricane. I have missed you all, and TWD, very much. (All images used in this post are screencaps from AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and “Talking Dead” unless otherwise specified.)

The walking dead last day on earth