Warning. This review contains several spoilers about the 10th season of the TV show “The Walking Dead”!

On April 5 the 10th season of the show “The Walking Dead” ended.

The 10th season was produced and broadcast almost all in the format that have become usual: 15 episodes of which 8 were broadcast in October / November 2019 and 7 in February / April 2020. The season finale was postponed to a date yet to be determined because post-production was interrupted when the Covid-19 emergency broke out. The problem could hit the whole saga and has already caused the delay of the airing of the new spinoff “The Walking Dead: Beyond World” as its debut is now announced generically for later in 2020.

The decline in the ratings continues but it’s no longer news despite a certain quality improvement generally recognized in the ninth season. People keep on abandoning the show, even among those who recorded the episodes. Angela Kang was added to the showrunners for the ninth season and her role has a weight in the tenth season as well with new recognitions about the quality, but that doesn’t seem enough.

The tenth season is entirely dedicated to the clash between the various communities and the Whisperers. There’s a new leap forward from the end of the ninth season, but only a few months. The situation seems to indicate a truce, but it’s clear from the beginning that there’s no real peace and that something can happen at any time.

“The Walking Dead” tenth season cast consists of:

• Danai Gurira (photo ©Gage Skidmore) as Michonne
• Norman Reedus (photo ©Gage Skidmore) as Daryl Dixon
• Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier
• Josh McDermitt as Eugene Porter
• Christian Serratos as Rosita Espinosa
• Seth Gilliam as Gabriel Stokes
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan
• Khary Payton as Ezekiel
• Samantha Morton as Alpha
• Ryan Hurst as Beta
• Cailey Fleming as Judith Grimes
• Cassady McClincy as Lydia

The end of the ninth season suggested in particular a clash between Carol and Alpha but that’s part of long-term plans that led to a long and complex story-arc. The beginning of the tenth season seems almost a diversion with an old Soviet satellite falling down, but in subsequent episodes the plot is back to the clash with the Whisperers.

In previous seasons, the story-arc of the clash with the Saviors seemed wasted to me and that of the tenth season seemed to me built much better. Negan is an important character again although the discovery of his escape’s circumstances and what followed was far from surprising.

In the tenth season there are still negative sides. For example, at first they showed a training of a defense against hordes of walkers with a kind of phalanx in the style of the ancient Macedonians, but they only used it during the attack to Hilltop. One problem I hoped would be eliminated is in the plots based on Carol’s mental imbalances. Honestly, sometimes it seems that the writers don’t really know what to do with Carol and make her go crazy in different ways.

In my opinion, the forced use of Carol seems to me a symptom of the number of characters that can hold important plots that’s become very limited. In recent seasons, several historical characters were killed off and replaced in a way that’s really limited. The good use they made of Negan in this season compensates only in part for those losses. I suspect it’s one of the reasons why many people abandoned the show in recent years.

The episode “The Tower” was supposed to set up the tenth season finale, and is about human relationships with many conversations between characters and the debut of the character who calls herself Princess. Compared to certain pseudo-introspective episodes from the past it’s fine. As a season finale it doesn’t work, but its aim was different and it’s not the producers’ fault if we have to wait for the real finale. Overall, this season confirms some improvements, but the Whisperers’s story-arc didn’t excite me, and by now I struggle to remember most of the characters’ names.