After the thrilling chaos of the mid-season premiere, The Walking Dead took a well-deserved breather for a measured episode that gently nudges the series in a new direction.
‘The Next World’ is an unusual episode of The Walking Dead in just about every sense. It has the lowest stakes and threat level of any episode in a good couple of seasons, takes place in a considerably different status quo to the previous instalment and frequently aims for comedy and fun, two things which were frequently alien to the show in particularly dour walker herd arc.
It’s not a particularly memorable episode by any means, and it’s fair to say that not a great deal happens across the 45 minutes. Yet as quiet breather episodes go, this was easily one of the better ones, and it was certainly a far more entertaining hour than, say, ‘Now’ from the first half of the season, which similarly featured a lack of progression on the storyline.
Perhaps the best way to describe ‘The Next World’ is that it’s likeable – it’s not aiming for greatness, but it generally achieves what it sets out to do in entertaining fashion. After the bonkers, audacious ambition of ‘No Way Out’, it’s hard to gripe too much about an episode that aims lower and mostly hits the mark.
The main development here was the introduction of Jesus (Tom Payne), a mysterious and ultra-capable new survivor. Tom Payne isn’t given an awful lot to play around with, and Jesus’ personality and motivations are kept deliberately hazy and nebulous as Rick and Daryl struggle to keep up, but this is a strong introduction for the character nonetheless, capably showing off his impressive fighting capabilities while teasing out an intriguing mystery about his true identity that builds up effectively towards this episode’s cliffhanger.
The Jesus storyline also gives the chance for Rick and Daryl to finally reignite their amusing friendly dynamic, and their pairing, coupled with Rick’s pleasing shift towards a more optimistic outlook, provides a surprising amount of comedy that genuinely works, lending this storyline a peppy sense of fun and excitement that really distinguishes it from the other similar narratives that have played out in The Walking Dead’s past.
It’s not jarringly light-hearted, but the dose of optimism and humour goes a long way in making ‘The Next World’ a breezy and entertaining hour when it could so easily have been yet another dour, depressing slog through the repercussions of a tragic event. That’s where the time jump works in this episode’s favour – it gets to have its cake and eat it, paying lip service to the aftermath of the walker herd invasion while progressing the storyline into a time period where people aren’t plagued by the trauma and guilt of those events, allowing for an episode that doesn’t feel weighed down by the events of past instalments.
The emotional meat of ‘The Next World’ resides within the Spencer and Michonne sub-plot, wherein Deanna’s reanimated corpse is finally put down. This isn’t an especially complex or ambitious subplot (its events can be broadly summed up by saying ‘Spencer finds his zombie mother, and kills her), but it’s an adequately touching and emotional way to close the book on the old version of Alexandria.
Spencer’s moment of closure is a solid moment of character development for a notably undeveloped and slightly bland figure, but it’s also, in broader terms, a symbolic way of establishing the capable, pragmatic yet optimistic ‘next world’ of the title by putting away the last vestiges of the old, less-equipped world. Deanna, as the leader of Alexandria pre-Rick, was more or a less a symbol of the pre-apocalyptic approach that nearly ended up in the town’s destruction, so her final death is a fitting and effective way to finally illustrate The Walking Dead’s shift into a new era of storytelling.
And then there’s Rick and Michonne, who finally get together right at the end of ‘The Next World’. This development will certainly have its detractors, and the proximity of it to the death of Jessie last episode is certainly questionable – but Michonne and Rick’s hook-up is an agreeably natural twist that’s not played for hysterical drama; instead, it’s a nicely naturalistic moment where two friends realise that they mean more to each other than they originally thought.
It feels like a development that’s organically stemmed from the way Rick and Michonne’s relationship has developed (and been portrayed) throughout the past few seasons rather than anything that was planned right from the start. Unintentionally or not, a lot of groundwork had been laid for this such as Michonne’s notably motherly relationship with Carl, so it simply feels like a natural and logical progression of their relationship.
‘The Next World’ might not be packed with incident, and there’s moments where it stumbles a little, such as the insipid and dull couple of scenes with Carl and Enid as they work their way through yet more tedious teen angst.
Nonetheless, it’s a decent instalment that re-calibrates the direction of the season after last week’s explosive events, shifting The Walking Dead as a whole towards an entirely new, expansive storyline. And there’s the first hints of that storyline at the end here, as Jesus appears in Rick’s room and asks to talk…
Aired at 9pm on Monday 22 February 2016 on FOX.
> Buy the complete Seasons 1-5 boxset on Amazon.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Let us know below…