“The Walking Dead” has never been a show for the squeamish. 

Since its dark, morally depraved series opening – who could forget the pigtailed Girl Scout from hell shot dead between the eyeballs – the comic book adaptation has set the bar for network TV gore. Survivors stab zombies through the head with complete indifference. Flesh is torn apart like the wimpy plastic bag on a Hefty commercial. As AMC’s big budget blood-fest has grown immensely popular, it’s become a bloody, twisted, cannibalistic household name. 

It’s a mainstream cult show. When it boils down to it, that’s really what the bloody-thirsty mega-hit is. It’s the show that’s too cool for your parents and too murder-y for even the most progressive of elderly TV viewers. But with the end of the profound and poetic third season, AMC’s hit is finally more than just a comic-book lover’s wet dream. 

“The Walking Dead,” which aired its season finale last Sunday, is finally the mature, fully-realized television drama we’ve been waiting for. While it isn’t without its blunders and weaker plot points, the show is nonetheless an enticing epic of decisions, consequences and morality in a world gone to shit. The third season showcased showrunner Glen Mazzara knack for heart and depth, even as gore reached a cringe-inducing high. 

The season explored issues of trust and ethics more than any earlier entry. With the addition of The Governor (played with a nasty southern drawl by British actor David Morrissey), Mazzara and company reminded us that flesh-eating zombies aren’t the only enemy in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The smiling Governor, who runs the modest-yet-innately-evil community of Woodbury, is a narcissistic creeper that could charm even the most sanctimonious prude into murder.

This is a man purging his humanity away with each day. His zombie daughter, chained up in his room like a German Shepherd, is the only thing that keeps him sane. He feeds her; he talks to her as if she’s going to run into his arms and ask for a bedtime story. When she dies, there’s no telling what this man will do — Morrissey’s governor walks the line between creep and sociopath like a seasoned tightrope walker. 

It’s The Governor that brings trouble to Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln, chalk up another point for Britain) and his ragtag team of troubled souls. Rick’s group is living in a local prison and, according to him, it’s a perfectly modest home for the group of 12. But we all knew that was bullshit. When The Governor finds out the group is held up in the prison, he will do anything to secure it — as The Governor says in the finale, “In this life now, you kill or you die – or you die and you kill.”

This is not your everyday comic book adaptation, people. “The Walking Dead” beautifully discusses so many issues of integrity, pride and morality. There was the arduous feud between besties Andrea and Michonne as they went their separate ways. There was Rick keeling over and crying when he found his old friend Morgan (Emmy-deserving supporting work from Lennie James) had gone crazy. There were the heartbreaking deaths of major characters along the way, reminding us that no one is safe in a zombie-infested hellscape. 

Sure, the third season had its moments of overkill — some zombie heads were slashed with the cartoonish violence of a 1990s video game, while writing was often melodramatic. And the symbolism was often laid on a bit thick — The Governor throwing a Bible in a fit of rage may have been the clearest symbolic gesture in the history of fiction. However, even when AMC overdid it, no show on TV was as ambitious or sporadically beautiful as “The Walking Dead.”

AMC’s mainstream success, which has been cleared for a fourth season, discusses the fleeting morality of our world by taking us to another world. That’s what people — ahem, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, ahem — often forget. There are stigmas out there with violence, campy gore and zombies that always seem to hold “The Walking Dead” back. I think it’s about time those were laid to rest.

I still don’t think my parents should watch the show. I understand how some of my friends feel sick to the stomach after a promo airs on AMC. I imagine sales for parental controls continue to skyrocket because of the gore-filled drama. But “The Walking Dead” is flat-out more than your everyday blood-soaked cult hit — it’s a strong, poignant character study on par with almost any other TV drama. Cool-ass zombie kills are just an added bonus.