Teetering on the Edge

"If you don't fight, you die." — Rick, "The Walking Dead"

The penultimate episode of the season of "The Walking Dead" didn't disappoint. Well, technically Rick was kind of disappointing, but the show itself was quite compelling. And it leaves a lot of questions to be answered in next week's 90-minute finale. Chief among them is what will become of our erstwhile hero.

It has been said that if you spend long enough chasing or hunting something, you risk becoming the thing you hunt. For a long while our heroes have feared people — not walkers — for the threat they pose humanity's long-term survival. And rightly so. Time and again, people have been the biggest threat.

A common refrain during the back half of this season has been the idea you can be out on the road for too long. The implication being you are out there so long you lose a part of yourself, something you can't get back. And, of course, our heroes have seen plenty of that — from The Governor, Terminus, etc. And often they've gotten close to losing themselves.

Rick, in particular, has walked on the ragged edge a number of times. But it's quite possible that last night he crossed right over that line. He was egged on by Carol, of course, and she's had her own dalliances with going too far. But something in Rick seemed to snap. In some ways, it felt like he'd become the kind of person he long feared. He felt miles away from the man that began this journey five seasons ago.

The question now is can he possibly come back? Do we want him to come back? For a while some fans have quibbled with Rick and his leadership, wondering if the group might not be better off without him. I've never felt that way, until last night. Watching him, soaked in blood, waving a gun around, and screaming felt a lot like others we've seen — villains on the show — and it was chilling.

We began the second half with our heroes wondering if they'd been out on the road too long and seen too much to come back from it. It seems like Sunday night we'll get our answer, for better or for worse.