Unpopular opinion: I actually really like Andrea. Does she make dumb choices? Yes. Should she have listened to Michonne? Yes. But is she also someone who wants to see the good in people, cares about those close to her, refuse to sit around when the Big Men were calling all the shots? Yes.
The earlier seasons are so good in that they have characters like Andrea and Lori who are complex and get things wrong but they know that. It’s not like the governor or terminus. They aren’t villains. Let characters be/do/fuck (in Andrea and Lori’s case) stupid. Let them be on the right side but still cause issues, because they give substance to a story, they add to the heart of it even if they’re infuriating at times. Andrea was such a fitting character for that point in the timeline. How long was season 1-2? Then 8 months on the road. The governor is the first genuinely bad person that she encounters that acts like he’s good. She’s not Michonne. She doesn’t see it the same way. It’s not that she doesn’t see the issues, she calls him out, and he is the kind of person who can justify and manipulate well because that’s what he does. Merle was a shitbag, but another really good character and they all had personality. The governor “provided” something both of them needed and wanted to believe in and for their own respective reasons it makes sense why they stayed, even if they shouldn’t have.
But then they stopped having depth. Or their plots were recycled over and over. The later seasons are so dull because you know who’s safe, there’s a billion characters that take up so much screen time just being there and adding nothing, the only real threat that wasn’t just recycled was the Whisperers, and they were genuinely great. The build up to Negan, also great. But so much of it just became forgettable and skippable from s7 onwards. I love Ezekiel but by the time he turns up, it’s not the same show anymore. It just isn’t. And how the fuck did Woodbury with a population of 74 feel bigger than the commonwealth, with a population of supposedly 50,000 people?
It pisses me off so much because I love TWD. And it was a show that had so much love poured into it in the earlier seasons and it showed. I watched it so many times and then by the end I was glad for it to be over. If I hated myself more I would watch the first episode then the last episode for comparison but I don’t, and so I won’t.
So as much as I love hating on it now, season 3 is brilliant. 1 and 2 are phenomenal. They didn’t shy away from making the characters flawed. Daryl was so good back then, and it reminds me why he was so popular and why he was one of my favourites. And now it’s over and there was no satisfying end to it. I cannot stand Daryl because of how they changed his character. It’s been nearly 3 years since it ended and I think the fandoms pretty much dead already but every now and again I’m reminded how much I love TWD and then I’m also reminded how much I hate what it became.
