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Tonight is Season 8 midseason premiere of The Walking Dead. Season 8 Episode 9 is not going to break the recent streak of extra long episodes. Yes, tonight’s episode is going to run longer than normal, too. And it should, considering that we might be sending off a favorite character. This isn’t a moment that can be taken lightly.
Tonight’s midseason premiere of The Walking Dead will be extra long, clocking in at 83 minutes. That means it’s running from 9 p.m. Eastern to 10:23 p.m. Eastern. This isn’t the first time an episode for The Walking Dead has run long. In fact, it happened a number of times last season and this season. The December midseason finale, for example, lasted 88 minutes (five minutes longer than tonight’s episode.) In Season 7, the midseason premiere was 73 minutes long. Even this season’s premiere was 67 minutes long, giving fans an extra seven minutes of runtime. The description for tonight’s episode reads: “Rick faces new difficulties after a battle; the fight continues in other communities as core members face hard decisions.” This description doesn’t seem to even get close to capturing what we’ll be dealing with tonight.
After the episode airs, Talking Dead will air as usual, for an hour. Then a repeat of tonight’s episode will air immediately after Talking Dead. This will likely be a Talking Dead you won’t want to miss. IF Chandler Riggs is really saying goodbye, then we’ll probably see him as a special guest on the episode.
Here’s a quick recap of what happened in December, during the last episode we saw of The Walking Dead. At the beginning of the midseason finale, we picked up after Daryl, Tara, and Morgan had defied Rick’s plan and driven a hole through the Sanctuary wall, letting the walkers pour inside — but also paving the way for the Negan’s people to escape. (It’s really not clear how they escaped or reorganized so quickly, but I think we’re supposed to ignore that part as viewers.) Meanwhile, Enid and Aaron went to Oceanside to try to convince them to help. But Enid accidentally killed one of their leaders and kind of ruined that plan.
Jesus and Maggie were stopped by Simon and his crew, and they had Jerry captured. They handed over their guns, and Maggie and Jesus returned to the Hilltop. She promptly killed a Savior rather than giving in to their threats.
Another Savior crew was at the Kingdom, wanting them to hand over Ezekiel. But Ezekiel created a distraction and locked the gates, locking himself in with the Saviors, and told Carol to save everyone like she saved him.
Negan arrived at Alexandria. He and Carl had a heart-to-heart talk. Carl offered his life in exchange for everyone’s — and in exchange for peace. But Carl was really buying time for his people to escape. After Carl escaped, Rick arrived and he and Negan got into a knock-down-drag-out fight. Rick finally escaped into the sewers, where the people were hiding. And that was when Carl revealed that he had been bitten.
Are you going to be watching The Walking Dead live tonight? Let us know in the comments below.
