The Walking Dead Review: The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be (Season 7 Episode 1)
On The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 1, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” Negan’s victim is finally revealed. It just takes half an hour, and the second half-hour isn’t any less stressful.
On the one hand, it’s not much of a surprise that the writers end up dragging the reveal out for so long. Maybe they thought it would be more suspenseful, more satisfying, or better storytelling to make fans wait to find out who was killed.
From the fans’ perspective, it’s just frustrating.
The Season 6 cliffhanger was discussed so much, and most of the reaction was negative. To stretch the reveal out even longer, knowing the cliffhanger upset people, just seems cruel and unusual.
To make it worse, the way in which they chose to stretch it out just felt like they were killing time.
If it had just been Negan and Rick’s little road trip, it might have been okay. The seconds-long flashes of every character facing the bat with some black-and-white footage from earlier seasons? Not totally necessary.
Making us watch Negan’s whole “eenie-meenie-miney-mo” bit again from Rick’s perspective? Absolutely and completely unnecessary. It’s so long.
On the Season 6 finale, it built tension. But we’ve seen it already. We know what he does. We only care about how it ends. So to make us sit through it again just feels like the writers are stalling. When a major character is about to be killed, I probably shouldn’t be yelling, “Just do it already!”
As for the victim, it actually ends up being victims.
Abraham’s death doesn’t feel too surprising. He’s important, but the story can go on without him. Losing Abraham doesn’t pack quite the same emotional punch that losing, say, Maggie, Daryl or Michonne would.
Glenn’s death is a different story.
It’s well-known that in the comics, Glenn is the one who is killed by Negan. However, the TV show often strays from the comics. One character’s comic book death scene is given to another character on the show. Characters last longer on the show than they did in the comics or get killed on the show even though the character is still alive in the comics.
At this point, it’s almost a twist for comic book fans to have a character death from the comic books actually happen on the show, making Glenn’s death somehow surprising and not surprising at the same time.
The scene itself, though, is unbearable to watch.
It is, without a doubt, the most disgusting, gory, and grotesque scene in the history of the show. The actual act of Negan repeatedly hitting Glenn’s head with the bat is the least horrifying part.
The make-up and prosthetics are grisly, but the absolute worst part is the noises Glenn makes as he attempts to speak to Maggie one last time, and the noises he makes in the moments before Negan delivers the final blows.
The Walking Dead wants to make sure everyone knows Negan is awful. Worse than the Governor, worse than anyone could imagine. We get it. But Glenn’s death scene goes a bit too far.
While it’s frustrating that it takes half an hour to reveal Negan’s victims, that means that there’s still half an hour left to the episode. Where do you go from there? The thing everyone was waiting to see has already happened, so now what?
More stress and stalling. That’s what.
There’s one other thing that famously happens in the comics that has not yet happened on the show. [COMIC SPOILERS AHEAD]
The Governor cuts off Rick’s hand.
Since this moment is overdue, the writers basically tease comic book fans during the long, drawn-out scene where Negan tries to force Rick to cut off Carl’s hand.
Are they going to make Carl lose a hand instead of Rick? Is Rick actually going to do it? Is Negan? Is Rick going to cut off his own hand? Is Negan going to cut off Rick’s hand?
The answer is none of the above. It’s another fake-out that drives the suspense and tension up, only for not much of anything to happen.
The rest of the episode feels like a cool-down. Everyone is left alone, defeated, to take a few minutes to mourn their losses. All in all, the Season 7 premiere is basically 53 minutes of non-stop stress, followed by a few minutes of crying.
Not much happens during the episode because you can’t give your fans two major, traumatizing character deaths and then just throw them into the action of a new season. You want to give them time to process it.
This episode was always going to be “the one where Negan’s victims were revealed,” and that very fact just proves why they should have been revealed in the Season 6 finale in the first place.
The season premiere should set the tone for and get fans excited about what’s coming, but instead, The Walking Dead fans got a stressful, frustrating episode that we would have rather seen months ago.
What did you think of “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be”? Were you angry about how long it took to reveal Negan’s victims? Share with us in the comments below!
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The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.
Katie Houlis
Katie is a recent college graduate who spent most of her free time at school binge-watching shows like Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, and Hannibal. She has watched every single episode of Lost at least ten times each (yes, even “Stranger In A Strange Land”). Current favorites include a bunch of comedies, lots of superhero shows, and a few shows with quite a bit of murder in them.