The Walking Dead – Season 3 Episode 16 “Welcome to the Tombs” Review
- Jamiex66
- Apr 2, 2013
- 4 min read
WARNING: Full Episode Spoilers Below
‘Welcome to the Tombs’ marks the Season 3 finale of The Walking Dead series, the highly anticipated showdown between Woodbury and our prison survivors has finally took place. The slow build-up for this event has been apparent over the last few weeks, with everything set-up for this climatic episode. How did the finale turn out?
We open to a scene that was teased in last week’s preview. As I had predicted, The Governor was torturing Milton who had taken it upon himself to burn all the zombies The Governor had planned to use on the Prison. Finally standing up for what he believed cost Milton dearly; after being beaten senseless he was forced to kill Andrea, but after refusing and attacking The Governor he was stabbed multiple times and left in the same room to die with the trapped Andrea. Knowing Milton would eventually turn and rip Andrea to shreds, this left Andrea to struggle to find her way out of torture chair she was tied to. This led to a few redeeming moments for Milton, wanting nothing but to save Andrea and willing to sacrifice himself to do it.
Woodbury is setting up to finally raid the prison, but Tyrese and Sasha decide against joining the attack. Stating they didn’t want to kill humans, we got a good sense of what these characters are feeling in this new world, choosing to stay and protect the elderly and children, instead of going to war. They were already at odds with The Governor’s method and the idea of killing women and children was something they found sickening.
The prison raid itself was handled extremely differently to the idea I had envisioned. Thinking our prison survivors had left and chosen defeat, The Governor searched the entire structure for vengeance. This scene provided some great atmosphere, with the music complementing the intense vibe as the Woodburians searched for Rick and friends. Glenn and Maggie were the only ones who stayed behind and ambushed The Governor and his soldiers. This was a very smart move, seeing as the initial attack by Woodbury would have killed many of our favourites.
Once Woodbury retreated we were given the most interesting scene of the entire episode, with the rest of our survivors waiting on the outside of the prison. One of The Governors “soldiers”, a teenage boy, was making a run for it before encountering the group. Herschel forced the boy to give up his weapon and just as it looked like the kid was surrendering, Carl shot and killed the boy point blank. This is a massive point for the character, showing how he views the world now; almost mirroring The Governor’s thoughts of shoot first ask questions later, even telling Rick that if he had killed The Governor earlier when he had the chance, Merle would be alive. This angle really satisfied and I am interested to see how the contrasted emotions of Father/son play out during season 4.
After last week’s finger-biting (literally) moment, The Governor made the 100% evolution to crazed mass-murderer. After catching up with the Woodbury soldiers who ran off after the ambush, he proceeded to kill almost all of them in a fit of rage. Knowing he had lost, knowing he couldn’t strike the vengeance he desired, he saw them as expendable. Interestingly enough The Governor is now still at large, along with Martinez and one of his other soldiers. This leaves some interesting stories for next season, with The Governor still waiting in the shadows for another attack.
Daryl, Michonne and Rick look to end this Woodbury struggle once and for all, heading to their town to kill anyone left. However they find out what The Governor did and save one of the Woodbury women, who accompanies them to Woodbury. With Tyrese and Sasha being the only adults capable of defending the town left, they meet our survivors at the gate. Though it could have been bloodshed from anyone else, Tyrese and Rick provide a truce and explain the situation of The Governor and their intentions to find Andrea.
When they finally find her we are provided with the emotional ending to the episode, though I personally found it didn’t work too well. Milton had died and bitten Andrea, leaving the one person who has never killed another human with no choice but to kill herself to avoid turning. We finally were given some facts from the character herself, stating she wanted to save everyone. But it was too little too late, with many disliking the character’s many bad moves throughout the season. Seeing Michonne cry was definitely something I didn’t expect and with such a strong character letting her emotional wall down, it did make the moment stronger.
The ending of the finale leaves us with a lot of open doors, with all the elderly and young from Woodbury now moving into the prison, Tyrese now a part of Rick’s group, The Governor still alive and Carl’s new darker look on life. It is hard to predict anything when it comes to next season. I was surprised that we made it through the entire episode with our main cast coming out unscathed. Knowing The Walking Dead, that was a complete shocker.
Overall the episode felt good, nothing amazing or mind blowing and it did leave many questions for next season. I feel like The Walking Dead excels when interaction is the episodes focus; with hardly any interaction throughout the episode, I feel like that held it back in the end. Still it was a nice way to end the season, with a happy ending which you don’t see often in the series. Now we must wait until season 4 arrives, to see how poor our survivor’s lives can become.
Jamie Briggs manages Analog Addiction and you can like them on Facebook, follow his daily life on Twitter @JamieAA and his videos on YouTube.
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