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The Harvest Festival is Coming to ‘The Walking Dead’

With the bloodshed and numerous characters slain over the years on The Walking Dead, viewers of the show are starting to worry at the mentions of the fair the various groups want to partake in this season. Why? The Harvest Festival that takes place within the comics of course. The festival does not end in the comics as most typically do in real lives. Families are not taking long walks back to the car with giant stuffed teddy bears. There’s no funnel cakes to enjoy doused with powdered sugar. No Ferris wheel for a couple to steal a moment away together.

Instead the Harvest Festival has the potential to leave viewers with a smorgasbord of blood and carnage along the ground. This is not the smorgasbord that Templeton takes partakes in within Charlotte’s Web. The festival in the comics renders a blood bath that Skybound compared to the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones. Who dies and who lives is debatable at this point. Deaths have differed for various characters within the show than their comic counterparts as witnessed recently in the mid-season finale.

Despite the carnage that might stand to be even worse than Negan’s arrival on the show at the end of season six, showrunner Angela Kang recently told EW that this season will feature the fair.

“Yes, we are going to see the festival. That becomes a part of the story for the back half of the season. We really dove into the idea of what this festival is in a real way for our people. The origins of these kinds of trade fairs were that people from far-flung communities would take a trek and trade useful goods because not every community had every single thing that they needed. It’s a place where people could learn new skills and pick up supplies that they needed. It’s also a chance for them to bond as different communities. In that context, we really get to see what each community is and how they’re even dealing with the very idea of this fair, because obviously, it’s been a point of some contention between the Kingdom and Alexandria. That’s a story that we see play out over the course of the back half.”

The thought process of holding a festival like this one is brilliant within the communities. A place that allows all the communities to barter for various goods as well as mingle with the various communities on the show currently. Characters will have a chance to visit with one another as well since the distance between the communities is painfully apparent on the show. This could lend itself to characters bonding with each other as well and learning from each other to make their own communities grow.

However, if a group of characters choose not to attend the fair this could be a divide and conquer moment for The Whispers to take out more than one communities living arrangements. The idea of seeing various locations set aflame is absolutely frightening to think about, but would be a great tactic to lure everyone into one place. Are the characters really better off that spread out from one another? Of course our favorite characters surviving and another community having to take them in for a while is far superior than the murder of one or multiple fan favorites.

The smart setup would feature not one, but two festivals this year. The importance is to bring Michonne, as well as others after the death of Jesus in the mid-season finale, into a false sense of security by having one festival go well. I cannot imagine that the mentality after Eugene’s rescue is at a high. There characters will be at a new all time low, especially Hillside. The debate of whether the festival will be a good idea or not will intensify and the truth is all these characters will need a win.

They need for this festival to go right. This might not be such a horrible idea for The Whisperers too to let them know that as long as they do not trespass on what they have deemed there land that all will be well. While this would be far more ideal, since so many viewers grew weary of the war that just took place on the past season of the show, another war will inevitably brew. The characters we have grown to love, and even the new group of characters that recently joined the series, will not take a fight lying down. The problem is neither will The Whisperers.

What are your predictions for the Harvest Festival?  Do you think the show will mirror the comics this go around?  Only time will tell once The Walking Dead returns for the latter part of its ninth season February 10th on AMC.