Last Day on Earth (The Walking Dead)

Plot

Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the group try to get Maggie (Lauren Cohan) to the Hilltop Colony for medical attention, but find that every one of the routes that they take is blocked by a progressively larger number of Saviors with increasingly frightening capabilities. Meanwhile, Morgan (Lennie James) finds Carol (Melissa McBride) injured from a cut on her stomach and patches her up. While Morgan goes outside to kill a walker that is making noise, Carol flees and Morgan again pursues on horseback. Roman (Stuart Greer), the Savior who survived her attack, finds her first and shoots Carol in the right arm and leg, stating that she will suffer like his friends did. Morgan shows up just in time to save her, breaking his vow by killing Roman, and encounters the mysterious survivor he saved from Rick back at the farm, who offers them help.

With time running out, Eugene (Josh McDermitt) volunteers to be bait to distract the Saviors by taking the RV by himself while the rest of the group carry Maggie to the Hilltop through the woods on foot. However, they end up running into the midst of a large group of Saviors who are waiting for them, having already captured Eugene. The Saviors disarm Rick's group and line them up, kneeling on the ground. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) himself appears and introduces himself to the group. He tells Rick that he is unhappy with him for killing his men while also informing the group that henceforth they will work for Negan, demanding that half of Alexandria's supplies will now belong to the Saviors. Negan states that he doesn't want to kill any of them, but in order to punish and send a message to Rick and his group, he decides to bludgeon one of Rick's members to death with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, which Negan calls "Lucille". When Negan says that maybe he will put Maggie out of her misery, Glenn lunges for him, but fails and Dwight kicks him back to his spot. Unable to choose, Negan taunts the captives with a game of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" before landing on his target. From the victim's point-of-view, Negan prepares to beat them, stating to his men to cut out Carl's remaining eye and feed it to Rick should anyone try to stop him. He then beats the victim over the head as the group screams in horror.

Production

On November 10, 2015, it was announced that Jeffrey Dean Morgan had been cast as Negan and would make his debut in the season finale. This episode is the third in the sixth season to air in an expanded 90-minute time slot. Director Greg Nicotero confirmed that they filmed two versions of Negan's introduction – one for broadcast with toned down language and the other for the Blu-ray and DVD release which has swearing to match his speech from the comics.

Critical reception

"Last Day on Earth" received mixed reviews from critics. While Jeffrey Dean Morgan's performance as Negan was praised, the episode was mostly criticized for its cliffhanger ending. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 43% rating based on reviews by 30 critics. The critical consensus: "Despite Jeffrey Dean Morgan's deliciously evil turn as Negan, the meandering "Last Day on Earth" — and its manipulative cliffhanger ending — make for a disappointing season finale." The audience rating is 6.6 out of 10.

Matt Fowler of IGN gave it a 7.3 out of 10 in his review and commented, "For all that 'Last Day on Earth' was really about, and what was important about it, it went on too long. And then failed to deliver a satisfying exclamation point. Instead, we got another fake out/cliffhanger. A technique this show is absolutely over indulging in. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was terrific as Negan though." Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode a C, the lowest grade given by the website for the show to date, faulting the episode for awkward, drawn-out writing and forced story arcs which couldn't maintain an atmosphere of suspense as they moved inevitably toward a fixed ending everyone knew was coming. Todd VanDerWerff of Vox gave the episode a negative review, calling it the worst episode of the show so far, and commenting, "The extra-long episode spent its first hour dramatizing all the excitement of your GPS insisting that you take a road you already know is closed, and the last half-hour sank some nicely spooky moments with a too-long monologue and a completely botched cliffhanger." However, he gave a positive review on Negan's introduction.

In response to the backlash the cliffhanger received, showrunner Scott M. Gimple said:

If you approach it from a place of skepticism or with the idea that there's some kind of negative or cynical motivation behind it... it's difficult to convince you otherwise. I do think we've done enough on the show and we've delivered a story that people have enjoyed [to warrant fans giving] us the benefit of the doubt. I truly hope that people will see [the Season 7 premiere] and feel it justifies the way we've decided to tell the story.

Ratings

The episode received a 6.9 rating in the key 18-49 demographic with 14.19 million total viewers. This was a significant increase from the previous episode, "East", which received a 5.9 rating and 12.38 million total, but also significantly lower than the ratings for the season 5 finale, which was watched by 15.8 million American viewers with an 18-49 rating of 8.2. Including live+3 ratings, episode was watched by 18.42 million Americans.