How The Walking Dead's Civil War May Go Down in Season 9

In the final intense confrontation, Rick injures Negan by cutting his throat with a piece of broken stained glass, but not deep enough to kill him. Negan has some house cleaning he needs to take care of before things can move forward towards what is hopefully going to be the end of this war in the finale. He followed through on his deal to make Simon pay for killing Jadis' Scavengers. The girl is Alicia, (Alycia Debnam-Carey) who quickly pulls a blade on Althea as Nick (Frank Dillane), Victor (Colman Domingo) and Luciana (Danay Garcia) burst from the ditches to hold Morgan and John at gunpoint as the episode ends with Althea curiously asking them, "So what the hell is your story?"

Is "The Walking Dead" going straight from All Out War to Civil War?

Or, we could be looking at a soft reboot where Rick - and Negan - take Carl's goodbye letters to heart and attempt to form a new community together; as impossible as that may seem.

In a makeshift hospital room, Rick told a recovering Negan he would "rot in a cell", echoing the comic books. The show has gotten away from walkers being the main threat for some time now and it feels like the time is right for them to become the focus and threat once more. At this point, the priest had all of the motivation he needed to high-tail it out of there. This is him finally realizing that he has to choose a different way. Even taking into account the fans who might have ventured out of Sunday to watch the season ender in cinemas on the big screen, that's a 42% drop in the demo from the Season 7 "The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life" finale of a year ago. All of those bullets that Eugene made were intentionally faulty and the Saviors' quick advantage was nearly immediately gone.

Instead, the show plays out in similar fashion to the comics, with Rick instructing Siddiq to save Negan's life, which he does despite the improbability of survival after losing so much blood. "Never come back here again", he told him. Does this mean that Maggie now wants Rick's head too? Yet, as the season went on, those scenes were revealed to be a fantasy, manifested by Carl's vision for a peaceful future. Stay tuned for updates on what happens from here. unless you're giving up. So we have a new war brewing on top of Negan being kept alive, Morgan leaving, and Dwight apparently leaving?

Cohan (whose distressed reaction to Rick's let-him-live decision was the best part of the episode) nabbed the lead role in the ABC pilot Whiskey Cavalier, which, coupled with her lack of contract, could make fulfilling her Walking Dead duties hard. While the emphasis was on rebuilding the communities up, there was also a tease for a major problem ahead. One of the only other shows now airing which does the 16-episode format is Suits, and even that goes for a 10/6 split to make for rollercoaster ride of a final stretch to a season.

While up 21% from "Worth" the week before, that demo result is also the worst any TWD season ender has done since the 3.0 that the finale of the 6-episode long first season delivered - and that was a great cable number back in 2010.

Eugene is one of the most hated characters on The Walking Dead, serving at the mercy of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the Saviors. Rick told Negan about how they needed to cooperate and achieve peace, somethingCarl told Rick when he was dying and that it needed to be done.