>>1066039
It's quite different than the comics now, with Carl being dead. There's even 2 timeskips in season 9 over several years. So far, I really like it. The annoying characters are dead, and it's unpredictable with certain other characters leaving the show.
9: Timeskip. Negan is in jail in Alexandria. Rick wants him to watch the city grow while he rots in jail forever. One bullshit plot point is, that the junkyard woman gets in contact with people from who knows where in helicopters (I have a theory about this one).
She joins Rick's group, after failing to kill Negan, who's henchmen without his knowledge killed all her people, who she then had to kill as zombies via shredder. Nice moment, actually.
The Saviors (Negan's people) are still around, led by Daryl, but noone trusts them. Glenn's wife even wants to kill them, and Saviors get murdered. Also, Glenn's wife FINALLY kills the cowardly former major by public hanging. She also tries to kill Negan, but doesn't do it, because he pathetically begs to be killed.
Another zombie horde shows up and kills the saviors and a shitton of other people, so Rick tries to lure them away from Alexandria on his own. During that, he gets wounded by getting stabbed on an iron rod and bleeds out while luring them to the bridge which was built to connect the cities for a better future. He lies on the bridge and blows it up, and the horde walks and drops into the river below. Michonne and Daryl helplessly watch. But opposing to the lies from clickbait articles, Rick is saved by one of the mentioned helicopters.
Second Timeskip.
Rick's daughter is basically new Carl now, wearing his hat too, but barely showing up. But she befriends Negan. There are new survivors, who communicate with sign language, kinda clever. The bridge got rebuilt and all villages trade now. Glenn's wife and overall Hilltop is ignored and contact broke up because she's a hateful bitch, so she's barely in the show. A boy from earlier arcs is grown up and falls in love with a mysterious, scruffy girl from outside (basically, Carl's arc in the comics, minus their interesting dynamic).
Michonne took Rick's place as leader. Daryl decided to live on his own in the wilderness.
Zombies start to behave strangely. They act organised and are heard whispering. They keep attacking and killing people. Turns out, those are the Whisperers. Humans wearing the skins of zombies and communicating by whispering, while moving in zombie hordes and even controlling their directions. They are all dirty and smelly looking.
They don't have names, I think it was numbers, and their leader is Alpha, a violent, unpredictable, cold, bald woman. Second in command is Beta, a large guy who has a cool 1 on 1 fight with Daryl at some point. The Whisperers even kill Jesus, who's still alive in the comics. The Whisperers appear at the gate of Kingdom and requests her daughter Omega, the mentioned scruffy girl.
You see how ruthless the Alpha is, because she forces one Whisperer to leave her baby to the zombies, because it won't stop crying (I wish that happened to Ricks daughter).
Alpha gets her daughter back, but because of her "The strongest survives" mentality, she doesn't stop there. First, she captures a woman and takes her skin as disguise (it's ridiculous, yes, but in the comics she doesn't even wear a disguise) to spy at Kingdom during a festival.
Daryl, Carol and others return to Kingdom for one of my favorite moments in Walking Dead. On their way, the find the heads of several characters on pikes, zombified and moving.
Including Henry (the boyfriend of Omega), characters hired to protect roads introduced in this season, Tara (who's that chubby woman /co/ went nuts over, who got WAY too much screentime, so I was really glad), and various other less important characters.
Season ended with winter starting, zombies getting frozen (finally, I've waited for that since Season 2), the group in danger of freezing to death, and Negan is out to save Rick's daughter's ass.
