The Walking Dead Season 7: 5 Ups And 3 Downs From 'Bury Me Here'

Ups...

5. The Culmination Of Richard's Arc

The Walking Dead Morgan Richard
Gene Page/AMC

Of all Ezekiel's people, it's Richard who has had the biggest arc on the show (granted, he hasn't had a lot of competition), and it's gradually built over recent weeks. While the King doesn't want to fight and Jerry just wants to eat his cobbler (classic Jerry), Richard has been intent on fighting back against the Saviours since before Rick Grimes walked into the Throne-room with the offer of working together.

Since then, he's been hell-bent on driving the Kingdom towards war, regardless of who gets killed in the process. So it is in this episode, then, that he sabotages what should be a routine drop-off with the Saviours in the hope that they'll kill him, thus finally forcing Ezekiel's hand.

He gets half of what he wants, as the episode ends with Ezekiel joining the fight, but Benjamin loses his life in the process, before Morgan later kills Richard as payback. While it would've been nice to see Richard given the chance to fight against the Saviours (and kill Jared), he still got a good way to go out, and actor Karl Malkinen does an excellent job with the character - especially his final monologue outlining his journey up until this point.

Up until this episode we could understand his point-of-view but not necessarily the costs he was willing to go to, but we saw just why to touching affect prior to his death.

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