This is not a still from the episode, but two stills, and it amuses me greatly. Photo: Jace Downs/AMC
The third act of The Walking Dead’s eleventh and final season has begun, but it seems like no one has notified the show. Aside from a quick montage of familiar faces at the beginning, with a little narration from Judith (Cailey Fleming), it’s an unceremonious sequel to the last episode. Which is not bad! But it’s not exactly a good thing either.
The last time we left our mad buddies, Daryl, Maggie, Aaron, Gabriel, Negan and his new wife Annie were being hunted down by Hornsby and about a million Commonwealth soldiers. Back in the Commonwealth, Yumiko was Gov. Pamela Milton’s attorney, Carol babysat the kids while doing part-time jobs for Hornsby, and Eugene, Max, Magna, Kelly, and Connie fomented the rebellion against the city’s wealthy elite, which peaked with them Connie writing an article about Pam’s son Sebastian’s habit of sending the town’s “undesirables” on him for various errands to die. It’s very important for me to reiterate that the newspaper shown in the previous episode looks like a terrorist manifesto, and a particularly poorly designed one at that.
Despite repeatedly saying that the article provides no evidence that Sebastian caused the deaths of so many missing people, Lockdown reveals that everyone in the Commonwealth believes it and has begun protesting outside Milton’s office, demanding: “Give Sebastian to us!” so… they can murder him I guess? There is a court system in the Commonwealth so I’m not sure why they would consider that an option. To be fair, Sebastian — now and forever Kingsley St. Buffingsworth of the Cape Cod Buffingsworths — is the most terrifying person in the zombie apocalypse, so I can see why they’d like to skip a trial and go straight to the execution.
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC
Honestly, I’ll go ahead and admit that there was a lot I wasn’t sure about on Lockdown. It has some nice action, but not enough to distract me from the plot, which often gets The Walking Dead in trouble. I’m fine with Daryl et al. and Hornsby chase each other for half the episode, although I don’t know if they know yet that Hornsby has taken over Alexandria, Hilltop and Riverside. I also like that Negan is sent to the Commonwealth to warn Carol and the others that Hornsby will almost certainly radio home and send his secret goons to kidnap the kids. Carol already had a secret stash in the attic where, of course, Jerry was hoarding groceries. It all seems smart!
It’s what everyone else in the Commonwealth is doing that annoys me because everyone seems to be working at cross purposes. Connie is delighted – delighted – to have incited the proletariat to rise up against the upper class/demand an asshole’s death, but Kelly fears things have spiraled out of hand immediately. Magna hates the upper class and wants a revolution, but somehow feels the need to protect them from the inevitable war that inevitably comes with a revolution, but also wants to leave. Yumiko feels that she needs to stay in the Commonwealth, even though the revolution as Pam’s lawyer will in all likelihood go badly for her, and then Magna says that if Yumiko stays, she will stay. While you go to the trouble of bringing down the Miltons if you just go? Why start a revolution if you’re worried it’ll put everyone in danger, because of course it will?
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC
Likewise, Connie’s newspaper specifically targeted Sebastian’s crimes…despite the fact that the newspaper’s headline (bananas) just says, “Pamela Milton is lying to you,” which, uh, she isn’t? She really seems to have no idea what Kingsley did, although she may be lying about other things. But Carol and Negan are chasing Kingsley, who is hiding in a secret room, passed out drunk and urinating in mason jars so they can bring him safely back to Pamela’s in exchange for the governor bringing down Hornsby. Carol even says they should blame Hornsby for the deaths, which would fully exonerate the Milton family and crush the revolution in its tracks.
I feel like everyone would have benefited from having a team meeting and figuring out what their goals are and how best to achieve them, partly because they’re all working past each other, but mostly it would be a lot more exciting to see these people working together . At the very least it would add a more epic feel to the conflict with the Commonwealth, which would be nice considering there are only seven more episodes left.
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC
To be fair, I don’t think the bad guys have a plan either. Hornsby appears to have conquered Hilltop, Alexandria, and Oceanside for the immense power and untold riches it will bring him, both of which do not exist. Pamela Milton just wants to be in charge and live her life in luxury, exploiting the working class (which sucks, but unfortunately is no more of a crime in the zombie apocalypse than it is in reality), but when confronted with protesters, initiates her somewhat called “B14” plan, which the show states is the following:
Seal off the city and force all residents to return to their homes. But then, sort of, telling them that anyone caught after curfew will be arrested “for their own safety.” But…since they’ve already ordered everyone to return home, why not just arrest everyone who’s outside, no matter what time it is?
And then it turns out there is indeed a massive zombie horde making its way into the city, so the lockdown is a perfectly good and smart thing to do, regardless of how it stifles public unrest. But did Pamela have a really huge horde of zombies waiting for that exact situation? How would she get them and contain them? Did she somehow have someone who was sending the zombies into the Commonwealth and endangering everyone, including herself, when she could just lie to her minions and say zombies were coming?
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC
In addition, the zombies get through several lines of defense before Mercer, Rosita, and a very small team of Commontroopers go out to stop them. It’s implied that someone, presumably Milton, ordered the advance soldiers to let the zombies through, but…why? Wouldn’t at least one of the soldiers be suspicious of being told to leave his post when zombies were about? They’re still out there when the episode ends, by the way – and Daryl has his knife to Hornsby’s throat, the group surrounded by Commontroopers who very emphatically don’t lay down their weapons.
Here’s the thing about all these questions and potholes – I don’t particularly care? I have no expectations that The Walking Dead will pull out all the stops for these final eight episodes, and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if the show manages to surprise me at all on its home stretch. It might, if the show decides to close that Commonwealth deal sooner rather than later and set the stage for the next TWD series; Maybe by showing us one of those evolved zombies we’ve heard so little about, or giving us clues as to how or why the heck Daryl is going to Europe in his spin-off. But somehow I don’t expect the show to do this for at least another six episodes. Until then, I think viva la revolución. Until you don’t want it viva. Either way.
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC
Various considerations:
- For some reason, AMC started uploading behind-the-scenes photos with the regular TWD stills, and that was too cute not to share.
- How did the jeep overturn? There are only two answers: 1) the driver somehow screwed it up incredibly badly since he was on a practically flat field, or 2) the zombies did it. Stupid either way.
- Carol’s look as Negan tells Kingsley how he saw her pulling rabbits out of her ass, as a metaphor for her ability to solve difficult problems, is perfection. Happy about the compliment and totally annoyed that Negan put it that way.
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