A reasonable episode in many way, betrayal, bluff, rough justice and a trap set.
If all this had happened in a shorter Negan story line, and hadn't happened before then we there wouldn't be half as much criticism.
But as it is, the episode was enjoyable but the story arch is dragging. I swear I'm done with this show if they largely drag some sort of resolution across the seasons.
Isn't there just one more to go? They needed to finish this now, and hook us on the next storyline before the break IMO. That seems unlikely.
Oh, and Mr head writer, can we have badass Michonne and Carole back please, instead of the whiny touchy feely rubbish. And some actual stories for Daryl.
They will be doing. Think we will see an altogether different TWD World/Universe next season. Next monday's episode should be pretty poignant. I don't know how they're going to bring that together since Negan has repositioned himself to now doing exactly what he really was in the first place (brutal murder) but then he wasn't, then he was using "resources", then Simon got pissed at the plan so reverted to a plan of brutal murder which actually failed miserably, Negan eventually found out he'd been triple-crossed by Simon and octuplet-crossed by Dwight. So then he's decide he'll just murder everyone again. The comeuppance of Simon and Dwight has been coming, probably should've come sooner. Although, Stephen Ogg (Simon) played his role pretty well and he even delivered Saviours style brutally in some pretty savage ways. It's a shame he's gone but in terms of storyline, he had to go at some point. Wonder what will actually happen with Dwight? Made to suffer or will he get a 'Jail Free' card again? Will Sherry turn up again? Would be odd.
The Hilltop is pretty much an easy targeted and with false intel, they could be walking straight into Negan's trap. However, it looks like Oceanside are likely to have a say and seek retribution against the Saviours. My semi-surprise element and this is purely a guess (relating to Jadis' story arc), will be that the helicopter will make a reappearance or some link to Georgie's group. Hopefully that question will be finally answered, in part at least. There is definitely going to be a surprise event happen (in the eyes of the Saviours and Hilltop anyway).
I'm looking forward to the knitting of Morgan's story arc to FTWD and his crossover there. So some element of the S8F should be focusing on his new journey, particularly as FTWD:S4P follows straight after TWD:S8F. There's been a lot spoken about this coming episode being about closure. Not just of All Out War but closure of these eight seasons to date, and a newer beginning.
It's going to be interesting how it develops from that moment on. I agree with you Batch that All Out War should maybe not have been for a whole season. Half would possibly been a little short but twelve episodes could've spent enough time on it, created a few arcs and resolved it. For e.g I think the Scrapheap/Garbage/Junkyard could've just been isolated to a concentration of just Jadis and developed her story to where we are at now. However they spent too much time on their switching of sides and it became a pointless group as a collective (much like Oceanside too). These two groups have probably made the All Out War and Negan story arc drag out much more than they should.
I know they wanted to focus a good chunk of that section from the comics into the tv show, as some kind of honour but it didn't really work or transfer onto screen as well as they probably thought. Lots of pointless moments and many individual 'out of character' moments. It's also meant that several decent characters have been lost in the haze and muddiness of the bigger picture. I'm sure the writers realise that it was the wrong thing to concentrate on this with almost no true way of how to write it out. A good cutting point/end to the war would've been in the aftermath of Carl's death. Like the following episode. Which is what I thought they were doing (reflection and the start of grieving and what really kind of mattered), but then they threw in the added mini arc of Simon losing it (which I didn't mind) and that let to muddying the direction again.
We'll see but I hope we get a pretty decent to very good finale. I imagine it will be a longer episode as if they do follow Morgan's crossover and focus on the ending of this war then it'll need that to do it well. Otherwise it'll just seem like they've rushed it and chucked it all into one episode.
On the flipside, I know we don't care too much for the studios and writers etc, but there have been ongoing disputes with AMC and Skybound (Robert Kirkman), Scott Gimple, and I think Gale Ann Hurd, as well as others about certain payments so maybe some of the writing has been affected by this (hands tied, refusing to release content). We saw that happen with the big writers strike during I think S4 or S5 of Lost and that very much affected that season(s). While there are obvious needs to remain professional and a fulfilment to contractual requirements. If those very contractual elements are 'up in the air' then very much if we strike with work, or we reduce our productivity to the bare minimum then the output becomes affected. It's quite possible that while still delivering the show, the writers in dispute have quite possibly spoken with their pens.