With AMC’s post-apocalyptic juggernaut rapidly approaching its final season, fans continue to reminisce over one of cable TV’s most influential programs. For the better part of a decade, the series based on Robert Kirkman’s original graphic novel supplied some shocking, violent, and truly emotional moments that set apart from its many peers in the zombie genre. One of the show’s biggest genuine surprises came during its ninth season, when it ushered in a new era in the canon through a six-year time jump that put Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) center stage in her father Rick Grimes’ (Andrew Lincoln) absence.
Given so much time has passed, the world naturally looks quite different than it did when Judith was just a toddler. Civilization is starting to return — albeit in a new, adapted form considering the state of the apocalypse — and it’s becoming clear that walkers are less a terrifying threat and more so an inconvenience, especially to those who’ve taken the apocalypse head-on from the very beginning. However, the tenets of modern society have yet to come back on a grand scale, so the cast of characters has to continually adapt to their — to steal a quote from every TV and radio ad in 2020 — “new normal.”
Essentially, their means of survival, weaponry, and technological capabilities are regressing, leaving them to live a drastically different lifestyle than they did in years past. These days within the world of , characters are horses instead of cars, and bows and arrows instead of guns.
