After a much-maligned finale to season 6, the most watched show on television, The Walking Dead returned with its season 7 premiere and while it was a solid start to the season, it also had its low points. Before the season 6 finale, it was announced the Watchmen actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan would be joining the cast as its new primary antagonist, Negan. Morgan was far and away the best part of last season’s finale and was excellent once again in this episode. Morgan absolutely chews up the scenery and makes even the most poorly-written dialogue enjoyable. His performance and when the show flashed back to the final scenes of the previous episode, finally showing who was on the receiving end of Negan’s bat, were the highlights of the episode. Without giving away spoilers, the death scene was extremely gut-wrenching and kept the viewer on the end of their seat. The major gripe that I had with this episode was the fact that they did not show the death scene until 15 minutes into the episode and this felt extremely arrogant and is an overarching problem that I have with the show as a whole. The only other problem that I had coming out of this episode was a scene that had group leader Rick, on top of an RV and hallucinating in which the show telegraphed who had died the previous night. Overall this season premiere got the show off on the right foot and they will hopefully use this momentum to propel the show to bigger and better things.

The Walking Dead Season 7 Premiere: 7.5 out of 10