Originally written January 17, 2014

In my opinion, Season 3 improves The Walking Dead in every way possible. Season 1 was great, but season 2 slowed the show down for a while, keeping the characters in a spot where there wasn’t much room to grow. Now season 3 picks up 8-9 months after season 2, and it just brings the characters to some really interesting places.

For one thing, I like the setting a lot. While season 1 had the group stay in a camp most of the time and season 2 was on a farm, season 3 actually has two main settings, but has our group staying at a prison, building themselves a fortress against the zombies lurking around outside. The prison is a really fun setting and provides them a lot of different opportunities for interesting scenarios.

At the prison, the show now has these group of characters in a different spot emotionally as well, as they are now true survivalists. Having to kill zombies has now become second nature to these people, just like eating is to us. Just something you have to do daily. The morale is down though, and a lot of time the mood is pretty grim. This is not a fun world to live in, and the season conveys that really well.

The group remains under the leadership of main protagonist Rick, who has now evolved to making all of the decisions for them himself. As he said in a speech at the end of season 2, this is no longer a democracy, and anyone who doesn’t like the way he’s doing things can leave. We see the “Ricktatorship” throughout most of the season; however, season 3 takes Rick to so many different places emotionally that it’s just incredible to watch. Trying to deal with a lot of the death going on around him (and there’s plenty more of it this season!), Rick truly goes crazy at certain points in the season, and seeing him deal with a lot of things is just interesting.

The other main setting of the season is a town named Woodbury, which is a town of over 70 people (keep in mind, in an apocalypse this is a rare thing) where people have tried to start rebuilding a society. Andrea, left behind by Rick’s group after the season 2 finale, finds herself in Woodbury along with her new friend that’s been taking care of her all winter, Michonne. Michonne is this black chick that carries around swords, and she’s a total badass, slicing off zombie heads left and right. The two meet the leader of Woodbury, a man known simply as The Governor. Andrea likes the idea of this new town, but Michonne soon sees what’s going on behind the scenes, and finds that The Governor isn’t as nice as his first appearances make him out to be.

And so The Governor is the main antagonist of this season, and a damn good one at that. There’s so many sick, twisted things that you see him do, that it’s impossible to not hate him and want to see him die. I absolutely love him as a villain. And if it isn’t obvious, at some point in the season the two main stories combine, leading to an eventual war between Rick’s group and The Governor’s Woodbury army. It’s an awesome storyline to follow, and truly drives home one of the show’s biggest themes better than it’s ever been shown, that in a world like this sometimes the living are a lot more dangerous than the dead.

While season 1 was only 6 episodes and season 2 extended it to 13 episodes, season 3 is the longest yet, running for 16 episodes. This both helps and hurts the show. It helps because it really gives the show a lot of time to flesh out all of its characters (whether it be our main cast, or the fantastic new characters as well) and also have a few interesting standalone episodes as well. There’s one episode that doesn’t have Rick or his group in it at all, one where it’s very character focused having only Rick and three others, and even one that plays out like a horror/suspense thriller, having one person hunting another…with a zombie twist. It gives the show more opportunities. On the same front, it also drags certain things out longer than they need to, making a few parts of the season a little slow. Still, on the whole, season 2 moved a lot slower, and overall I just thought season 3 was the show’s best season yet.

4.5/5