The Walking Dead's Season 9 finale is a reminder how much the show has improved this season

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"The Storm" was a "simple episode, but that doesn’t make it less effective, and the way it effortlessly lets us see what’s going on in our main characters’ heads is just another improvement over previous seasons," says Rob Bricken. "It does a lot of table-setting for season 10, in which new showrunner Angela Kang will have another major hurdle to overcome—the loss of Danai Gurira and her leading character Michonne. After the departures of Rick, Maggie, and Carl (although the latter was killed off), that doesn’t leave her a lot to work with. But after the graceful, delightfully bananas way Rick was literally airlifted off the show, I have a great deal of confidence that Kang will find a way to keep us all watching. And maybe that’s what’s most important. I’ve enjoyed so much of this season, to the point I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so invested in the show. But this might be the first time I actually feel real confidence in it going forward. As always, though, it’s The Walking Dead, and you can never really know when people are going to stay at an old man’s farm for an entire season or spend two frustrating years antagonizing and being antagonized by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. But for now, I’m very happy to be in a position where I don’t feel blessed relief that another Walking Dead season is over, and wish season 10 were already here."

ALSO:

• Season 9 got back to the core of what worked about the show in the first place
• The creative revitalization of The Walking Dead this season followed a strange bell curve
• Season 9's biggest shock is that the show got good again
• Some Walking Dead fans are accusing the show of ripping off Game of Thrones' White Walkers
• Showrunner Angela Kang on the "logistical hurdles" of filming heavy snow in Georgia: "The hilarious thing is, we had like the warmest November we’ve had in the entire time I’ve been on the show"
• Director Greg Nicotero: Snowpocalypse has "opened up another palette for us"
• Kang reveals season finale Easter eggs and homages