"The Calm Before" is the fifteenth and penultimate episode of the ninth season of the post-apocalyptic horror television series The Walking Dead, which aired on AMC on March 24, 2019.
To affirm the pact, Ezekiel has the communities sign Michonne's charter and then starts arranging for a small combined force to travel to the Hilltop to make sure it is secure from an attack by the Whisperers.
That night, as most of the fairgoers gather for the film, Lydia is saving a seat for Henry when Alpha sits next to her and gestures for her to stay quiet.
To their horror, they find a line of ten severed heads on pikes made up of Ozzy, Alek, D.J., Frankie, Tammy Rose, Rodney, Addy, Enid, Tara, and Henry, meant to signify Alpha's territorial boundary.
Instead, Siddiq tells a different story: before the end, the prisoners were found by Ozzy, Alek and D.J., who gave them the chance to fight back.
"The Calm Before" involves the deaths of several characters and mirrors an iconic scene from the comic book series that is a preamble to the Whisperer War arc.
According to executive producer Greg Nicotero, they knew that this scene would happen where it did in the season, but not until about two to three episodes prior in the production schedule did they know who would be falling victim.
For Henry, Tara, and Enid, they used a combination of these animatronic heads alongside digital placements of the actors themselves acting out their dying roles.
The critical consensus reads: "'The Calm Before' exemplifies everything that The Walking Dead does best - bittersweetly affirming the bonds of a makeshift community and finding glimmers of humanity in a nihilistic landscape before dropping a horrifying twist that will leave viewers reeling long after.
"[5] Writing for Den of Geek!, Ron Hogan in his review said: "The Walking Dead rarely deals in taut emotions, preferring to manipulate with big pushes and pokes.
The very same incidents strike two related people totally differently, and in the denouement of the episode, the very things that lend sweetness and happiness end up causing the greatest in bittersweet pain.
Club praised the episode with a qualification of A− and in his review he said: "At best, “The Calm Before” could be a memorial for what this show has been as it heads toward a new future, a reminder of what it used to look like during its strongest seasons, before reshuffling the undead chessboard of its major players and changing up the nature of its structure and stories.
“Warning Signs” showed this was possible, and the Whisperers are an ideal foil by which to engage in some ambitious new ways of dealing with these characters and communities as they enter a new era of existence.
True, this show hasn't demonstrated anything like the kind of consistency that would point to such a maneuver; continuing its uneven mix of soap-opera melodrama and intriguing experiments in post-apocalyptic thrills is the likely progression.