“The Walking Dead” kicked off the back half of season five Sunday with a gut-punch of an episode destined to rank as one of the series’ best.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you know the drill: Stop reading. Spoilers below.
Written by showrunner Scott Gimple and directed by zombie-stylist extraordinaire Greg Nicotero, the midseason premiere made the most of flashbacks, flashforwards and hallucinations — tools the series has used with mixed results in the past. The end product was a poignant hour of television that hinted at new beginnings while marking the end of the road for one beloved character, Tyreese.
Death, of course, is nothing new in this post-apocalyptic AMC drama based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book series. Last year’s midseason finale, watched by a whopping 14.8 million viewers, culminated in a big one when Beth (Emily Kinney) took a bullet to the head.
Despite having a body count higher than the population of some small countries, it wasn’t until now that the show really took us inside the mind of someone who’s dying — an experience that was jarring, disorienting and terrifying yet ultimately comforting. This one dug up All The Feels.
Chad Coleman (“The Wire”), the actor who plays the gentle giant known as Tyreese, or Ty, turned in an impressive performance as a long-suffering man making peace with himself during his last brutal hours on earth.
Coleman found out Tyreese’s number was up two episodes before the filming of Sunday’s installment, titled “What Happened and What’s Going On.”
“Scott Gimple called me in,” Coleman said during a phone interview Friday. “I sat down and he said, ‘The unfortunate time has come for Tyreese to go.’ I just laughed and told him to stop joking. Then he teared up and I was like, ‘Wow. Wow. Wow.’ That’s the only thing that could come out of my mouth.
“He proceeded to tell me what my final episode was going to look like, and it was amazing,” Coleman added. “I was ready to shoot it right away.”
The premiere opens with a shovel stabbing the dirt, followed by a series of images that read like a connect-the-dots whose finished product you’re afraid to see.
Drops of blood spill on a drawing of a house. Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) presides over a mysterious funeral. Noah (Tyler James Williams) is sobbing. Wait a minute! What are Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino) and Mika (Kyla Kenedy) doing here? And why are these dead girls reassuringly telling someone — at this point, we have no idea who — “It’s better now.”
By the end of the hourlong roller-coaster ride, we’re painfully aware that the grave was being dug for Ty, a compassionate mountain of a man who’d dug so many graves for others since first appearing on the show in 2012. That’s around the same time Coleman lost his real-life sister, Dee, to pancreatic cancer. She was 49.
“I remember I had to shoot a scene where I was digging a grave,” he said about his start on the series. “The producer Denise Huth came into my trailer. She said, ‘If you can’t do it, we understand.’ I told her I don’t know what else to do but to go on and do my job.”
That soldier-on mentality also defined his character, who we came to understand more in Sunday’s episode.
In an effort to prepare Noah for the worst as they made their way to the young man’s hometown in Virginia, Tyreese recounted a story about his father. He said his dad taught him and his younger sister, Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), not to hide from the ugliness in the world. When stories of faraway wars and massacres would come on the car radio, his dad refused to change the channel, forcing himself and his kids to confront reality.
“Keeping your eyes open,” Tyreese said. “My dad always called it the high price of living.”
Later on, Ty referenced that mantra — “I know who I am! I know what happened and what’s going on!” — in a shouting match with the ghost of the Governor (David Morrissey), one of the many apparitions who paid him a visit after he was bit by a walker (Noah’s younger brother) in Noah’s house.
“The Governor and Martin [Chris Coy] had to remind me that it’s hell on earth,” said Coleman, name checking the sociopath who would have killed baby Judith at the start of the season if Ty hadn’t intervened.
Flashes of friendlier faces also appeared to Ty as the life drained out of him.
In his mind, Lizzie and Mika reached out to take his bloody hand. In reality, it was Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), who sliced off his arm in a desperate but ultimately futile attempt to save him.
He had a vision of Beth strumming her guitar, singing about a struggling man who’s got to move on.
He saw Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) smiling at him from the front seat of the car, where Ty’s journey would come to an emotional, peaceful end. After years of forcing himself to listen to the news, it was finally time to “turn it off.”
“Those who came back to me died horrific deaths and they needed to let me know that they were at peace,” Coleman said about his character’s dead friends. “They were my heaven affirmation.”
FYI, Coleman is at peace, too.
“I’m lucky to have been a part of something so amazing,” said the actor, who got his start on the stage and played a Death Row inmate in “The Exonerated” at the Shubert Theatre (2003).
He’s already at work on Syfy’s upcoming space drama, “The Expanse.”
“It was always in the back of my mind that somewhere along the road — because I’m not in the comic books the whole time — I’ve got to go,” Coleman said. “All good things come to an end, and I’m OK with it.”
COMING TO CHICAGO: Coleman is one of several cast members scheduled to appear at Walker Stalker Con Chicago Feb. 21-22 at Navy Pier. (Whether he makes it here is up in the air; it will depend on his shooting schedule for “The Expanse.”) Tickets are still available for the fan fest that’s focused on, but not limited to, “The Walking Dead.” Yours truly is slated to moderate a panel featuring Emily Kinney (Beth) and Tyler James Williams (Noah) at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22.
