Clementine is damaged. Emotional scarring is starting to wear on The Walking Dead’s young heroine. She deals with loss, loneliness, and violence in different ways, and Season 2’s premiere, “All That Remains,” makes it abundantly clear that her innocence is lost. The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1 - “All That Remains” centers on how you, as Clementine, survive the savagery of humanity and the ceaseless danger of the undead. More than this, “All That Remains” examines how a strong, independent Clementine survives the sorrow of losing everything. The overarching story here is empty and vague, and your decisions from last season don't appear to matter much two years later. Clementine ends up in the company of an untrusting new group that finds her stranded and alone, but because everyone exists to question Clementine, we’re left not knowing what anybody but Clementine wants. Pete, the group’s sympathetic leader, has potential as an interesting father-figure type, but we’ve seen that story before. Clementine gravitates toward Luke, a young man she can confide in about Lee, but he’s never presented as anything more than a nice guy. The most interesting opportunity for potential is another young girl, oblivious to the brutality beyond her bedroom door, who wants to pal around with Clementine. This new group of survivors whose fascinating, strained relationships will inevitably lead to surprising conflict don’t explain much about themselves or their motivation. The main plot thread of the season is clearly a threatening character to come, but they keep their fears fairly secret right up until the abrupt ending. Whether by design or indecision, the grand scheme of where this story is going seems as lost and confused as Clementine. It’s her story, though, that defines Season 2. The Walking Dead’s limited objectives and light puzzle elements, collecting supplies to treat a wound, or scavenging for food, for example intelligently correlate to Clementine’s motivations. It affects how she handles a situation, what this group of survivors thinks of her, and which of them she’ll trust. Your decisions dictate the direction of Clementine’s story, and the kind of young woman she’s become in Everett’s absence. Season 2’s premiere of The Walking Dead is predictable in good and bad ways. Its character drama is strong, its technical prowess is not. Clementine’s character development highlights the fact that she was a secondary character, someone to look out for, in the first season. Here, she’s come into her own, learned from the Lee Everett we knew more about, and is stronger than she’s ever been, both as a person and a story’s subject. For now, Season 2’s meandering main story is too vague to be exciting right now, but if the writing so far is indicative of how Telltale will handle the remaining episodes, The Walking Dead could bottle lightning twice.
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