Comparing the Walker Horde From The Walking Dead Premiere to the Wight Horde From “Hardhome”

The Walking Dead entered its sixth season this past Sunday night, and the episode was centered around the largest herd of walkers the show has ever seen. The size of the undead herd inspired at least one critic to draw comparisons to “Hardhome,” the episode from this past season of Game of Thrones that featured its own undead masses. How does The Walking Dead’s walker horde match up to Game of Thrones’ army of the dead?

If you haven’t watched The Walking Dead, here’s a quick primer: TWD was created by Robert Kirkman and started out as a comic book/graphic novel before being adapted for television by AMC. In Kirkman’s world, the human race doesn’t know what to call the undead, so descriptors like walkers, or biters, or even moaners are used…but they are never called zombies.

When walkers begin to congregate, for whatever reason, they usually form huge horde-like groups called herds. Throughout The Walking Dead‘s six season (and counting) run, there have been many differing types and sizes of herds, from herds that overrun farms and swarm the countryside, eating everyone and everything in their undead path, to herds that pile up against prison fences until the supports give way and all hell breaks loose. As the undead go, herds of walkers are about as terrifying as it gets, which is why the Season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead drew so much attention, as it involved a massive group of them being directed somewhere they could be easily killed, or at least not trouble anyone.

According to Greg Nicotero, the show’s producer/walker creator, the Season 6 premiere used more walkers than ever before. He told Variety that more than 1,000 people were in walker makeup for the episode’s big payoff, in which a giant chunk of the herd starts shambling toward a human settlement after escaping their rock quarry holding area. Here’s what the rock quarry full of the undead looks like at the top of the episode.

If you look at that and think of the huddled masses from “Hardhome,” you may not be alone. We’ve talked before…exhaustively, in fact…about how Game of Thrones Season 5, Episode 8, “Hardhome” was the best episode of the season, if not the entire series to date.

Not that I need to remind you, but in “Hardhome,” Jon Snow and a few men of the Night’s Watch, along with Tormund Giantsbane and a select few wildlings, travel to the village o Hardhome by the Shivering Sea. After some negotiations with the wildlings stationed there, Jon and Tormund convince most of them to get on boats and return to Castle Black and to safety…and then this happens.

The Night’s King descends upon Hardhome and proceeds to massacre the unprotected wildlings, making his own herd of undead in the process. The major difference between Game of Thrones’ undead and The Walking Dead’s is that the wights on Thrones could outrun Usain Bolt, while TWD’s shuffle along, slow and steady.

I consider myself a horror film connoisseur, specializing in zombie flicks, and nothing scares me more than some dead thing running full tilt directly at me, with nothing on its mind but eating my face off and devouring my brain. The Walking Dead is a fantastic show, and the Season 6 premiere was amazing in scope, size, and number of walkers used, but Game of Thrones wins this battle of the undead, hands down…just ask Karsi.

H/T HitFix

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