Can ‘The Walking Dead’ Rebound A Week After Its Worst Rated Episode Of All Time?

“Here’s Negan,” the tenth season finale of The Walking Dead, airs tonight on AMC. I won’t spoil it, except to say this: It’s a fantastic origin story for Negan, and while it is familiar to readers of Robert Kirkman’s source material, there are a few interesting wrinkles, too. I don’t know if it fully completes Negan’s redemption arc, but it does at least satisfactorily explain what led him to become the kind of brutal, dictatorial leader who lorded over The Saviors and brutally tortured and murdered his enemies. Grief and shame can have a powerful effect on a person.

What’s remarkable about the fact that “Here’s Negan” is one of the best episodes in 10 seasons of The Walking Dead is that it also happens to follow the worst-rated episode ever. Literally. Last week’s episode, “Diverged,” which saw Daryl and Carol go on separate adventures, felt like the very epitome of a filler episode. Very little happened, the plot was barely advanced, the character development felt redundant, and even the stabs at humor fell flat.

As a result, IMDB users ended up giving the episode its worst rating ever for The Walking Dead, and to be honest, it wasn’t close. “Diverged” fetched a miserable 4.1 out of 10. That score was significantly worst than the second-worst The Walking Dead episode ever, which aired the week before, “Splinter,” but even the Princess-centered episode at least scored a 5.0. Before the last two episodes, however, the worst episode ever was the lousy season seven episode, “Swear,” which is still the last time we saw Heath. Where is Heath? Even that episode, however, scored a 5.8.

Ultimately, I don’t disagree with the IMDB users ratings for the last couple of episodes (although, I actually liked “Diverged” slightly better than “Splinter,”) but I am very willing to cut the series some slack. The show had aired only one episode in the last year (and even that episode was delayed for months), AMC was desperate to provide some content before season 11 came along this summer, and the show had to contend with COVID protocols before a lot of other shows had restarted production. They made the best of a bad situation, and while two of the six episodes weren’t great, the other four were. Meanwhile, “Here’s Negan” — the new tenth season finale — will probably be remembered as one of the show’s best ever.

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