Well, at least Hershel got a souvenir from his trip to Manhattan. This is how The Walking Dead: Dead City ends? Really? I hate when things finally get interesting at the last possible second. After all my complaining that the relatively short season was dragging its feet toward a finale, the last episode left things so open-ended that I thought for sure there was more to come.
To adopt a popular structure from fandom, here are five times I checked to make sure that this was the season finale of The Walking Dead: Dead City, and one time I didn’t:
- When Ginny, after making it all the way back to Negan, just left with Perlie.
- When a brand-new character threatened Perlie’s daughters and demanded to know about the Croat’s methane production.
- When Maggie implied that she was going back to kill Negan.
- When the Dama barely scratched the surface of her plans for Negan.
- When we learned that the Dama met, and maybe bonded, with Hershel.
- The split screen did, finally, provide the punctuation I desired.
The episode starts with our surviving main characters reunited thanks to Ginny’s flare. Negan is upset that Ginny followed him to Manhattan. Perlie Armstrong offers to take her back to Maggie’s people like some kind of reverse Les Miserables, where this time Javert is the one taking care of Cosette. The metaphor fits pretty well, actually. All of the rebels are dead, and remember last week when Maggie made an offhand comment that Negan’s crimes were worse than “stealing a loaf of bread†à la Jean Valjean?
Negan reveals to Ginny that he’s the one who killed her father. Presumably, the girl’s dad was one of the men who attacked his wife. Not only that, but he tracked Ginny down because he knew she was alone and fatherless. (I still don’t understand why Negan tracked Ginny down instead of reuniting with his own currently fatherless child.) “I’m not who you think I am,†he says. At first, I thought he had done some real introspection and was admitting to her that he’s a bad role model. But then I realized that he was putting on yet another performance, hurting her to make her leave with his new broheim Perlie Armstrong.
Then, when Ginny finally says half a line, “I want you to—,†Negan angrily cuts her off! “All these months, and now you wanna chat,†he says. I’ll do you one better, Negan: Now you wanna interrupt her?? Later, he asked Maggie what she thought the girl was trying to tell him. I don’t know; maybe you should have let her finish! On this, the weekend of Barbie, I can’t with men.
Alone again, Maggie and Negan go to the smoke pillar that the widow identified. There, with no warning beyond a slightly guilty look passed between them, they start to fight. It’s a compelling fight because Negan doesn’t want to fight back. I like that kind of dramatic tension in a fight. It reminds me of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There’s just one major difference. Negan ain’t Steve Rogers. He doesn’t have that moral center. I’m not really moved by him pulling punches. It’s so unimpressive that Negan refuses to fight Maggie back that it almost feels sexist.
He also figures out what Maggie is up to way too easily. It probably wasn’t hard to figure out that her real plan was a hostage exchange: him for Hershel. But how the heck did he just figure out that Maggie lied about the stolen grain without Ginny telling him or even indicating it to him in any way? That’s such a random piece of information that doesn’t really affect him. What was the point of Ginny even being there if not to warn him that Maggie was going to betray him?
After dropping Ginny off, Perlie Armstrong drives back to New Babylon. There, his superior entertains his fabricated story about killing Negan for a minute. She then starts monologuing about cigarettes. They’re in the tobacco industry, it turns out, but they need a central heating source in order to increase production. So after lightly threatening his children, she asks that he tell his story again and not leave out the methane. Why … so that New Babylon can process dead bodies into gas too? Or so that they can go to war with the Burazi? We do not find out. That’s the last we see of Perlie.
Maggie gets the upper hand on Negan, hands him over to the Croat, and gets the heck out of dodge with Hershel … who’s pissed! He thinks that his mother doesn’t see him and is always looking over his shoulder. That’s fair and probably true for a lot of these kids in the apocalypse. Safety is so important that families don’t get to bond the way they once did. What’s your point, Hershel? But then he says that she cares more about getting revenge on Negan than him, which is rich.
Everyone on this show seems really eager for Maggie to get over Negan killing Glenn. Or at least they love bringing up how she isn’t past it. Negan says it. Hershel says it. They’re all pretty annoyed that she isn’t over it. Negan really seems to want her to give in and accept that they make a good team. I find that really distasteful. I understand that it has been over ten years, but I don’t think that’s fair. Don’t resent a woman for not compartmentalizing her trauma and emotions. I feel like a broken record, but there are a lot of ways that a character can work with someone they hate without just magically moving on. They call a truce. They find a common enemy. They begrudge. It’s an old trope! We’re all familiar with it!
Toward the end of the episode, the Croat rides in an ambulance with Negan to the theater where the Dama is located. He apologizes for disobeying Negan all those years ago. This is the lesson that he’s learned in the time they were apart. Not that he shouldn’t have killed a young girl, but that he shouldn’t have disobeyed his leader. At the theater, Negan “finally†meets the woman behind the curtain we met in the previous episode. The Croat takes an unexpected page out of Stan Twitter’s book and calls them Mommy and Daddy. Then the Dama lays out her plan to rule Manhattan and then the country with Negan’s charisma and brutality as their secret weapons.
“What is politics if not performance,†the Dama asks. There’s that word again: performance. This idea that Negan has been playing the monster has come up several times this season and this episode. The Croat compares him to a rock star. That’s their justification for making a villain a main character. Personally, I don’t think that’s something they needed to justify. But it continues to not sit well with me. To a certain degree, we are all performing. To another, I can understand if Negan was a little “on†while terrorizing other communities and was consciously over the top. However, killing people is not a performance. That’s real. They don’t get to stand back up at the end and take a bow.
But even though the Croat (and I) believes that Negan does enjoy the power of making others submit with force, the Dama is more interested in putting on a show. She wants him to be their de facto leader. Then the music ramps up, indicating that a big reveal is coming. That reveal? That she cut off Hershel’s toe and is willing to take more flesh if Negan disobeys. Also that the Dama and Hershel talked at length while he was kidnapped and may have bonded. She’s forcing him to be a Big Bad. Maggie and Negan are, through circumstances beyond their control, enemies once again.
Oh, and right before this happened, Maggie apologized to her son. “I don’t know how, but this thing with Negan,†she tells Hershel. “I’m gonna finish it so that I can just let him go.†Does she mean finish it like … emotionally? Or finish it as in killing him? She did not specify. I remain skeptical as to whether or not this show wants me to believe Negan is more noble or mature than Maggie, and this really didn’t clear anything up.
It feels late in the game to ask this, but: What does Negan want? Does he want to just mope around and help the kids whose parents he killed? Does he want to try his hand at an honest leadership position? Does he want to get back to his wife and child? Does he want to team up with Maggie? He hasn’t said! I feel like this show is begging for a season two (which it’s been granted!) given the unanswered questions and larger universe implications. But I worry that if Negan is now stuck “acting†for the Dama, we’ll never know what’s actually going on up there … like Lucas Lambert Moy on The Other Two but murder-y.
Ultimately, I did enjoy Dead City as a character and world-building experiment. In particular, I enjoyed Lauren Cohan’s performance. Her mid-episode monologue about growing up dreaming about meeting Santa at Macy’s, and the way she tapped on the glass in the direction of the store before saying so, was subtle and lovely. But “enjoy†is kind of where it starts and ends.
Bridge & Tunnel
• So we’re just going to not explain why people live in an abandoned theater and sleep in auditorium seats? You’re trying to tell me that New York City is out of rooms and/or beds somehow? This is, like, the weirdest group of people I have seen on any TWD show, and I’m devastated that we didn’t get more time with them.
• Translation corner! The episode title means “We are home†in Croatian. The New Babylon’s Latin slogan, tranquillitas ordinis, means “well-ordered concord,†and due to its association with war in diplomacy further confirms that New Babylon means business.
• Twice the Croat has brought up a savior named “Jerome†and how they linked up and talked about what happened to Negan. I cannot stress enough how much Jerome is not a character in The Walking Dead. I do not know who the fuck Jerome is.
• Did my Beth Greene heads catch Hershel playing guitar at the end of the episode? They’re so similar, and I’m devastated the show never pointed that out.
• Having seen The Walking Dead and other spinoffs, the idea that the Burazi could take on the rest of the world is laughable. Other communities have armies! They have helicopters! Silly, silly New Yorkers. Always making things about ourselves.