On Sunday night, Rick Grimes’s war with the Saviors finally came to an end. But rather than a grisly murder, Rick’s feud with Negan wrapped up with an act of mercy: after a near fatal blow, Rick chose to revive his longtime enemy rather than letting him die. Contrary to what Rick’s behavior throughout this season has suggested, it seems the Grimes patriarch finally learned the lesson his son tried to instill from his deathbed: mercy is the only way forward in this apocalyptic world, where the dead walk and death gets doled out seemingly indiscriminately. As Carl put it to Rick just before he died—and as Rick repeated to his allies and the surrendering Saviors—“There has to be something after.”

Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman explained on Talking Dead that this was a “huge turning point” for Rick. Even more importantly, it may also be a turning point for a series that has long felt lost.

Just after Rick slit Negan’s throat, Negan murmured something curious: “The kid didn’t know a damn thing.” In his letters to both Rick and Negan, Carl had pleaded for mercy—for the two to put the cycle of violence behind them and work together toward a better future. As Rick heard Negan’s dying words, he realized that by letting Negan expire, he would effectively become his own worst enemy. “I think in that moment, in that fleeting moment, that’s when he decides, if I continue with this, if I don’t try to save this man’s life, it’s over,” Andrew Lincoln said of his character on Talking Dead. “So I think it is ultimately a story about restraint rather than revenge and love rather than hate, which has always been integral to our show.”

But while this has, at times, been the case, the past few seasons of The Walking Dead have occasionally forgotten that distinction. After Glenn and Abraham’s violent deaths in the Season 7 premiere, many critics wondered if the series had officially gone too far—by manipulating its audience, and by using gruesome deaths as a crutch in place of real emotional substance. “Love” seemed less central to the series than simple heartbreak; its emotional arcs were too often punctuated by horrifying deaths that almost always played out on-screen.

On the surface, Carl’s death this season could have been seen as further confirmation of that phenomenon—but upon closer examination, it also held a hint that the show had finally learned better. With his dying breaths, Carl pled for the violence to stop—and his own death took place off-screen, which made it feel more emotional and less exploitative. Viewers were not asked to revel in it, nor were they subjected to the gut-wrenching pain of watching him die. Instead, the focus was on Carl’s wish to create a future in which death isn’t so commonplace.

As Kirkman himself put it on Talking Dead, “Every major conflict in the history of The Walking Dead has ended with a huge death or someone dying.” But here, instead, Rick chose life. “This is him turning over a new leaf and deciding there’s a different way forward. . . . It shows that from this point on, the stories are going to be very different.”

With new show-runner Angela Kang stepping in for Season 9, the potential for change seems even more pronounced. After all, Fear the Walking Dead is already changing for the better with its own new show-runners in place. And while it seems too early to call this a surefire sign that The Walking Dead is deliberately changing its course, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

WHAT TIME OF YEAR IS IT ON THE WALKING DEAD?

This photo has a lot of layers—both literal and figurative. Clearly, the hat is a nod to the blistering sun—which, ostensibly, is also responsible for the impressive amount of sweat soaking through Daryl’s shirt. Then again, if it’s so hot, why on earth is Daryl—the king of bare biceps—wearing this loud button-down shirt? For the love of God, if we’re going to give him an unnecessary layer, make it a poncho.