At some point, every great series must come to an end.
Sometimes you get a satisfying coda to a wonderful experience, and sometimes that eagerly-anticipated
series finale turns out to be the loogie that ruins the punchbowl.
As much as we all love The Walking Dead, it can't go on forever.
When the walkers finally stop walking, how do we think it'll all go down?
The walkers evolve
We don't really know much about zombie biology, but we do know about viruses.
Viruses evolve, sometimes because of environmental factors, and sometimes against human intervention.
Right now, the zombies are shambling, hungry monsters who hunt based on smell and sound,
but what if they're capable of... becoming more?
Zombies are strong, but they're slow, and can only really use two senses.
The virus and the human body seem to have a symbiotic relationship after death.
So there's nothing really stopping the virus from mutating these guys into a whole new
kind of zombie.
Virus mutation is not altogether unlikely, and when that happens, mankind is totally
toast.
The walkers win
There are simply far more walkers on Earth than there are living people.
And even though humans possess superior intelligence, they just can't seem to keep it together as
well as the brainless dead can.
Humans lack unity, and zombies have an amazing persistence.
As we watch the last struggling group of survivors dwindle, in a world gone wild from neglect,
they’ll eventually run out of resources.
The food options suck…
“Peanut butter and jelly, diet soda and pigs feet.
That’s a white trash brunch right there.”
...and no one seems to really pursue farming too seriously.
It's a pathetic, whimpering death…but it's depressingly closer to reality than any apocalypse
we've ever seen before on TV.
If The Walking Dead is one thing, it's depressing.
The humans win
We know almost nothing about walker physiology, other than the fact that their guts make a
great disguise.
“Oh this is bad, it’s really bad.”
They die when their brains are injured, and they spread a zombie-making disease, but that's
really about it.
At this point, we haven't met a single zombie that's died of natural causes, so we can only
assume that they're basically immortal if unharmed.
But walkers are also easily killed with just about anything pointy and well-aimed.
It's been suggested that the walkers are the Earth's answer to environmental changes.
So if humans stop acting stupid and focus on cleansing the world of the undead, the
planet's ecology will be better off than ever.
Zombies make amazing mulch.
It might not be great for the surviving humans who have a hankering for pizzas rolls, but
you can't please everyone.
Cremation becomes mandatory, and mankind crawls back to the top of the food chain.
Utopia is discovered
Between The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, we’ve only really seen what’s happening
on the coasts.
We have no idea what's happening in the middle states, aside from some hints from a network
of park rangers.
We also don’t have any idea about what's happening in the rest of the world.
We've seen maybe 2% of what's really going on out there, which leaves a lot to the imagination.
Once we know that Rick’s party is truly safe, we'll be able to sleep at night, and
the series can end.
On Marc Maron's WTF podcast, creator Robert Kirkman said he'd like to see the TV series
end on a positive note, so real, actual, measurable success isn't out of the question.
A cure is found
Disease experts are in pretty short supply, but we've seen labs and hospitals as sanctuaries.
While it seems unlikely that someone will whip up a zombie cure and crop-dust the entire
planet with it, the discovery of something to counteract the zombie virus would pretty
much save the world.
No, it won't restore Grandpa to normal, but at least it'll stop him from hungering for
living flesh, which is a pretty fair compromise.
It ends with Rick
When a show loses its star, it rarely lasts more than a couple of seasons before totally
collapsing.
Rick is really the compass of the group, even when he's spinning wildly off course.
While characters like Daryl and Carol are interesting to watch evolve, The Walking Dead
is Rick's story from beginning to end, and without him, we just don't have a focal point.
Whether Rick just can't survive the thousandth onslaught, he manages to pass from old age,
or Andrew Lincoln just decides that it's time to go, Rick's story is the only story.
Like a canary in a coalmine, once Rick is gone, start preparing for the bitter end.
Then again, Carl's story is also a part of Rick's story.
We'd only like to see Rick dying in a final episode sort of deal, where he passes the
torch of leadership to the guy who was by his side throughout the entire zombie apocalypse,
his son.
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