The Walking Dead Season 8 Premiere: 6 Ups And 2 Downs From 'Mercy'

3. Key Characters Together Again

One of the overarching issues with Season 7 was the way it split up its storylines and characters. For the majority of the season major players were scattered about at different locations, and the show spent episodes on just one community at a time. It led to dull singular instalments, but also plotlines stalling for weeks at a time.

We've heard previously that Season 8 would address that, and it does so right off the bat. There are three main groups of characters - the Saviours; the army led by Rick, Maggie, and Ezekiel; a subgroup of Carol, Daryl, Morgan, and Tara - and they're all largely in the same place and a part of storylines that feed into each other.

There's much more agency to the storyline because of this, and the show feels like more of a whole than it has done in a very long time. It throws up interesting character pairings, both pre-established - Rick and Maggie, Daryl and Carol - and new, like Morgan and Tara, and it's far more interesting to watch an episode that can both show them together and cut between these various teams. A couple are underserved, most notably Michonne and Rosita (who hardly appears at all), but for the most part it's a big improvement on the previous way of working, and the characters and plot are much more enjoyable as a result.