Last night’s episode of The Walking Dead season 9 featured a pretty important milestone for the TV show. While the comic books have explored surviving a post-apocalyptic world during a harsh winter since their early days, the finale, titled “The Storm,” was the first time the survivors have had to face a tough blizzard on screen. And what’s more, the frost-bitten zombies that are out there.
The episode made good use of the walkers, too. The frozen zombies discovered by our heroes were eerie and the walkers bursting out of the snow was the horror highlight of the hour. However, there is one big problem with the way the undead were presented in “The Storm.” And that’s, how the heck were the ones under the snow not frozen when the others were?
This is something that Walking Dead fans had a lot to say about online, as evidenced by the tweets below.
How come the walkers in the open are frozen stiff but the walkers buried in the snow are not? Eugene, we need one of your glorious explanations here. #TWD #TheWalkingDead #TWDFamily #TWDFinale @WalkingDead_AMC
— Giovanni I. Alabiso (@GiovanniAlabiso) April 1, 2019
@WalkingDead_AMC Okay. The group comes across 3 standing frozen walkers and then they get to the river and unfrozen walkers emerge from under the snow. I don’t get it. #TWD #TheWalkingDead
— DTM714 (@dtm714) April 1, 2019
Lmk how tf all these things not frozen, those standing ones were frozen but the burried ones arent pic.twitter.com/A1e6uE1VEB
— Dom (@di1499) April 1, 2019
Why didn’t the snow zombies freeze, too? Good grief. #TheWalkingDead #TWD @WalkingDead_AMC @AMC_TV
— Tom Varner (@tomvarner) April 1, 2019
https://twitter.com/MinardiCeiling/status/1112530943103942656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1112530943103942656&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcomicbook.com%2Fthewalkingdead%2F2019%2F04%2F01%2Fthe-walking-dead-season-9-finale-blizzard-fans-question-frozen-walkers%2F
As one fan put it best, this plot hole was “not cool.”
This is upsetting! How they come across frozen walkers, but by the river they still move???? This was not cool, no pun intended!!!
— Willie Colon (@Realwilliecolon) April 1, 2019
Logically-speaking, the walkers’ differing temperatures makes no sense, but thankfully, the fact we’re talking about zombies here means we have a bit of leeway to come up with some sort of explanation. The undead’s biology has never been fully explored, after all, so we really don’t know how different zombies would react to the same environmental conditions. Alternatively, the production team probably thought it would be cool for some of the walkers to emerge from the snow, and you can’t fault that logic, as it really was.
In any case, “The Storm” is being widely cited as one of the most visually-interesting episodes of The Walking Dead yet, with the winter wonder horrorland giving the show a completely fresh flavor. Although, the depiction of the frozen zombies did remind viewers of another creature from a certain acclaimed TV show. Yeah, they’re quite like Game of Thrones’ White Walkers.
