The Walking Dead: 8 Dumbest Moments In Rick's Last Episode

2. The Six-Year Time Jump

Five episodes after The Walking Dead gave viewers its biggest time skip yet, it's jumped ahead another six years following the conclusion of Rick Grimes' final instalment. Though kept ambiguous in the final scenes, the producers have since confirmed the length of the skip, bringing the total amount of time that's passed between Season 8 and 9 to a whopping 7.5 years.

While that offers the chance at a fresh start for the show without Rick, it raises more than a few questions. Firstly, it means that more time in this post-apocalyptic landscape has passed offscreen than it has on (and who knows how many interesting stories along with it).

This is a series that just spent five episodes on its characters building a bridge. Even the most simple tasks lead to episodes of near-death drama and turmoil, and now the show is just expecting the audience to accept that nothing significant has happened in over half a decade.

That also means that Rick's movie story will have more significance than his one on the show, and be a larger part of his overall arc than the 3ish years he's currently spent in the fiction of this universe.

The time jump should have freed the writers up, but it's only introduced a quagmire of difficult questions.