The Walking Dead 5 Early Episodes That Hooked Fans In (& 5 Late Ones That Turned Them Off)

As The Walking Dead continues to tragically fall from grace, here are 5 Early Episodes That Hooked Fans In (And 5 Late Ones That Turned Them Off)

For the past decade, The Walking Dead has been one of the most popular shows on the air. The story of a group of survivors struggling to stay alive in a zombie-infested post-apocalyptic wasteland clicked with millions of viewers.

Unfortunately, as with any long-running series, The Walking Dead’s quality has declined in the past couple of years, and it can be charted back to a handful of latter-day creative decisions by the show’s staff that alienated the majority of their fan base. So, as The Walking Dead continues to tragically fall from grace, here are 5 Early Episodes That Hooked Fans In (And 5 Late Ones That Turned Them Off).

10 Hooked fans in: Vatos (season 1)

In season 1’s “Vatos,” Amy was ravaged by a couple of walkers that wandered into the survivors’ camp, and in the episode’s closing moments, she died. This was a huge moment for The Walking Dead, because it was the first death of a major character.

A few months before Game of Thrones did the same thing, The Walking Dead established itself as a show in which no one was safe. Even the most significant characters could feel the wrath of the undead. In any given episode, we could be seeing a character for the last time. At the time, that alone was exciting enough.

9 Turned them off: Last Day on Earth (season 6)

At the beginning of season 6, the coming of Negan and the Saviors was teased. Then, 16 episodes later, he finally showed up in the season 6 finale, “Last Day on Earth.” In the comics, Negan established himself as a formidable foe immediately by beating a fan-favorite character to death.

The Walking Dead’s fan base was unclear if the show would do a straight adaptation of this or repeat that storyline with a different character. Lo and behold, in the season 6 finale, Negan did kill a lead character. But it was shown from that character’s point-of-view, so we were still none the wiser. It was nothing more than a lazy publicity stunt.

8 Hooked fans in: Better Angels (season 2)

The penultimate episode of The Walking Dead’s second season, “Better Angels,” set up a heck of a season finale. We found out that everyone was infected with the zombie virus, so even if they weren’t bitten, they would still turn after they died. And then Rick and Shane’s mounting tension reached its boiling point and the two got into a fight to the death, with Rick winning.

Shane rose up as a walker and Carl shot him in the head. Then, the camera panned over to the swarming undead as they quickly approached Hershel’s farm. As Martin Lawrence would say, “This s**t just got real.”

7 Turned them off: Swear (season 7)

Ranked the worst ever episode of The Walking Dead by IMDb, season 7’s “Swear” is a classic example of a filler installment. To distract from the main plotline of the Alexandrians’ struggle under the Saviors’ thumb, the writers dragged out the story of how Tara ended up returning to Alexandria to a full episode’s length.

She washed up at an all-female community called Oceanside and eventually made her way back to Alexandria, where she learned that Abraham, Glenn, and even her girlfriend Denise had all been killed in the time she was away. Many fans felt that, as compelling as Alanna Masterson is in the role, Tara wasn’t a rounded-enough character to carry a whole episode.

6 Hooked fans in: TS-19 (season 1)

In the season 1 finale, Rick Grimes and his group of survivors found the safe haven they’d been searching for. The CDC actually did have a secure underground bunker filled with food and water that they could all pitch up in. It seemed too good to be true. And of course, it was.

Now that the storyline of characters finding a safe haven that’s more sinister than it seems has been done to death, it’s getting harder to have hope in them before the inevitable rug-pull. When “TS-19” first aired, fans had no idea what to expect. For all intents and purposes, the characters actually had found their happy ending.

5 Turned them off: Heads Up (season 6)

Most fans of The Walking Dead had figured out that Glenn was alive by the time “Heads Up” aired. A few weeks earlier, in the episode “Thank You,” Nicholas killed himself on a dumpster surrounded by walkers, then his corpse fell on Glenn and Glenn was seen covered in blood as the walkers feasted on someone’s guts (implied to be his).

He turned out to have been shielded by Nicholas’ corpse and survived for days under the dumpster. (Come on.) And the fact that Glenn died for real a few months later in the season 7 premiere made it clear that The Walking Dead’s writing staff had wholeheartedly embraced gimmicks over earnestly serving their characters.

4 Hooked fans in: Pretty Much Dead Already (season 2)

Since AMC splits the seasons in half, The Walking Dead has a tradition of going out with a bang in its midseason finales. The midseason finales aren’t the end of a season, but as the last episode that fans will see for a couple of months’ hiatus, they’re arguably just as important. The Walking Dead cemented its tradition with its first midseason finale, season 2’s “Pretty Much Dead Already.”

After a multi-episode arc in which the survivors were pitched up at Hershel’s farm, searching for Carol’s young daughter Sophia, she turned out to have been zombified in the barn the whole time. And Rick promptly shot her in the head.

3 Turned them off: How It’s Gotta Be (season 8)

Season 8’s midseason finale “How It’s Gotta Be” received The Walking Dead’s lowest viewership for a midseason finale since the show’s infancy in season 2. The plot primarily revolves around Carl’s slow, drawn-out death. One day, while taking food to his secret survivor friend Siddiq, he gets bitten by a walker. Then, he spends hours on end coming to terms with his demise and saying his goodbyes to all of his loved ones and escaping an invasion in the sewers, all while he’s about to turn into a flesh-eating monster and he has no idea when.

It felt a little disingenuous as a send-off for a character who’d been around since the beginning, no matter how many fans hated him. It was made more controversial by Chandler Riggs’ father’s insistence that his son was edged out of the show for personal reasons, not creative reasons.

2 Hooked fans in: Days Gone Bye (season 1)

The pilot episode of The Walking Dead, “Days Gone Bye,” plays like a self-contained mini zombie movie that was written and directed by The Shawshank Redemption’s Frank Darabont. If The Walking Dead wasn’t picked up, “Days Gone Bye” could’ve stood on its own as one of the best zombie stories in recent memory.

It had an epic scale, with many one-off shooting locations and scenes dedicated to building atmosphere as opposed to setting up the premise (the premise of the show isn’t even apparent by the end of the pilot, unlike Breaking Bad’s similarly unconventional pilot), which is unheard of in TV pilots.

1 Turned them off: The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be (season 7)

After the eye-rolling point-of-view tease at the end of the season 6 finale, The Walking Dead’s season 7 premiere “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” had the burden of explaining who felt the wrath of Negan’s bat. Fans had already been disappointed by all the build-up leading to a soap opera-like gimmick.

“The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” didn’t do the show any favors with its excessive graphic violence and psychological torment. When Negan was forcing Rick to cut off his own son’s arm and Glenn’s eye was busted out of its socket with a baseball bat, millions of fans (4.57 million, to be exact) realized they weren’t being entertained anymore and tuned out forever.