So guys, I've been wandering around this wiki and I've seen lots of people expressing how much dissapointed they were with this finale. They expected at least 2 prison survivors to die, and none did. Two people in Woodbury (including a main) did instead. They expected a big showdown in the prison, and neither that happened (people just ran out). "They will ambush them and kill them all", "The prison is booby trapped with walkers", between others, they said. I must admit I expected some of the above to happen (i also made a blog about how could lots of people die in the possible fight of the finale), but later, after watching the promos and reading lots of interviews, I had a feeling the prison arc wouldn't end there. And that is exactly why I believe people didn't like it. It was the end of a season. Not the end of the whole story:
We have had two season finales, in which their respectives arcs came to an end (Atlanta, The farm); Giving a satisfying ending to almost everyone. In this case, we haven't seen everything yet. I knew the Prison had so much more to give, and I knew it wouldn't fit in the ammount of episodes season 3 had. This arc is one of the longest in the comics; and the last episodes were just... away from the story itself! In "Clear" we don't even see the prison. Neither we do in "Prey" unless in that tiny bit in the ending. They didn't give the prison much development in the series since the mid-season finale, and I started to sense the writers were just taking space to make the arc last much longer than this season, and it looks I was right (finally, I'm right about something I'd love to happen). So now that lots of stories apart from the prison (Like Woodbury) are done, we will surely see much more from prison in season 4. It will just keep going further, we have new characters, and along with the ones we already know, these will be developed a lot. Tyreese is now firmly in the prison (I also said prison arc can't end without Tyreese living in it for a long time), none of the Greenes died since we met them, this Karen girl looks promising (like a replacement of Andrea), the prison is full of people, Daryl just lost his brother, Michonne just lost her "best friend", it was confirmed someone betrays the group next season... Yes, this all tells me season 4 is going to be much greater than season 3, mostly because the cast was completely renewed/changed, and will focus much more in the prison than going for runs outside to get weapons while someone outside another town gets hunted down by a psycho!
I loved the way they closed the season setting up lots of stuff for the next one. This second part of the prison will be awesome. If you enjoyed the season finale as much as I did, I can't imagine how much you'll love the ARC finale as much as I will...