Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City concluded with Maggie and Negan barely avoiding capture by Marshal Armstrong — helped in no small part by both his deputies getting killed. Now Negan and Maggie must continue making their way through the ruins of New York toward the Croat, a former associate of Negan from his Savior days who’s holding Hershel hostage.
When we last saw them, that mission had encountered yet another snag when a random old lady surprised them inside a storage room.
Meanwhile, Ginny has been taken to the new location for the Hilltop to be kept safe while she awaits. We still don’t know where Annie and Negan’s son are, but Ginny is clearly attached to him. Combine that with her seeming inability to speak, and it’s a safe bet that being dropped into an unfamiliar setting like this won’t go very well.
As always, the recap portion of this review will contain plenty of spoilers. The sequence of events has also been streamlined for the sake of clarity.
New Allies and Enemies
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
The episode opens with Maggie and Negan escaping from the storage room moments before zombies break down the doors and swarm in. We also learn that the old lady (Esther) who blew out Negan’s match managed to steal Maggie’s bag and run ahead of them.
The pair pursue Esther up an elevator shaft to an office window, where she zip-lines across to another building. As if that weren’t surprising enough, the old woman flings the handle back and motions for Maggie and Negan to follow her. Once they catch up to Esther (who doesn’t speak English), she offers them some cooked pigeon for some of Maggie’s things. She also makes it very clear that going toward the building with smoke rising from it is a terrible idea.
Esther then leads Negan and Maggie to two of her people (a couple named Tomasso and Amaia) who immediately draw nail guns on them. Maggie attempts to lie and say she and Negan were headed toward a settlement in Canada, but Amaia sees right through it. She and her brother force the pair to their own settlement (which appears to be in a bank) and imprison them in one of the second-story bathrooms.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Later, we’re treated to a flashback of Maggie scolding her teenage son for repeatedly missing weapons training. Hershel appears indifferent, both to the training and his mother’s concern that he be prepared at all times to fight for his life. When Maggie attempts to connect with him over his drawings, Hershelf blows her off and storms out.
Back in the present, Maggie and Negan argue about their predicament. Negan states his belief that Tomasso and Amaia’s people could be useful, both as extra manpower and for gathering information. Maggie responds that the whole point of Negan being there is the knowledge that he’s supposed to have about the man holding her son.
This leads Negan to tell her about his history with the Croat, who was one of the first people he took in as part of the Saviors. The man turned out to be both extremely loyal and an expert at torturing people to extract information. While Negan fully admits to being a monster at times, the Croat’s depravity was enough to give him pause. Things came to a head when the Saviors found a young girl during a conflict with the Kingdom. Negan gave a direct order to let her go, but the Croat was convinced she was a spy and decided to torture her anyway.
The girl eventually admitted to being a scout for the Kingdom before the Croat brutally killed her. Negan was infuriated by what he’d done and attempted to kill him, but only managed to shoot off one of the man’s ears before he got away. He’d not heard from or about the Croat until now.
Maggie is not pleased to learn that the person she’s traveling with to save Hershel is someone the Croat very likely wants to kill. Negan assures her that his knowledge of how the Croat operates can still help them.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Later, Tomasso moves Negan and Maggie out of the bathroom due to an impending raid by a rival group. When he accuses them of bringing the raiders to them, Negan counters that they had nothing to do with it and would actually like to help. Tomasso initially doesn’t believe him, but gets on board when Negan manages to get a sharpened pigeon bone to his throat and willingly lets him go.
After getting their supplies and knives back, Maggie and Negan hide just as a group of raiders appear wearing motorcycle helmets covered with blades and begin killing people. They meet up with Tomasso and Amaia along with another member of their group (Luther) and head toward the roof. As they’re linking up with everyone else, one of the raiders appears and grabs Esther. Despite Negan’s pleas to let her go, he kills the defenseless old woman, anyway.
Negan grabs the man and beats him until he’s nearly unconscious. After Tomasso grieves Esther’s death (and ensures she doesn’t turn into a zombie) Negan then tells the others to flee before picking up Esther’s murderer and walking him back inside.
Maggie follows Negan, who takes the man to the second-story balcony and slams his head into three panes of glass. When the other raiders appear, he gives them an old school Savior Negan taunting before slicing the man’s throat and stomach open and showering the raiders with their teammate’s blood. He then threatens to kill them all in a similar fashion and throws the body over.
After the raiders flee, Negan turns around to see Maggie watching him. The Saviors act immediately drops, revealing a man who can’t stand that part of himself anymore. Later, Tomasso and Amaia thank Negan and Maggie for helping them. Upon learning that the raiders work for the Croat, Maggie admits that he’s the real reason she and Negan are there.
Despite it basically being a suicide mission, Amaia agrees to help them get to him.
Old and New Haunts
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Over at the new Hilltop colony, Ginny struggles to fit in with the other kids — which was already a tough task even without her inability to speak. The person who took her there (Nina) attempts to make the girl feel welcome, but to no avail.
Later that night, she sneaks out and finds a bike, which is clearly going to take her toward Negan and impending plot complications.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Back at the Manhattan dry cleaner, Marshal Armstrong awakens to discover that he somehow managed to drag himself over to a well-hidden corner before the concussion Maggie gave him hit its second wave. He considers going after his gun (which Maggie discarded), but decides against it after seeing that the weapon is surrounded by walkers — including a zombified Marshal Gritz.
With his quarry in the wind and his escape window getting shorter, Armstrong decides to go to the address on the envelope we saw him looking at last episode…which happens to be the residence of his brother, Joel Armstrong.
Armstrong heads to the apartment, breaks in, and discovers that his brother killed himself via a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. He takes a moment to mourn Joel’s passing before snatching the gun and escaping the apartment just as zombies begin to break into it. Moments later, he’s caught in one of the net traps that have been laid out around the city.
That night, Armstrong is cut down and taken prisoner by a group of people wearing bladed motorcycle helmets led by the Croat.
The Verdict
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
I understand that The Walking Dead: Dead City has to work within a six-episode timeframe (and a budget), but I really wish Negan’s relationship to the Croat was explained in a series of flashbacks rather than an exposition dump.
At least we got one flashback showing us Maggie’s struggles as a mom to a teenager. As poignant and well-acted as that scene was, it made me wish we got to see Hershel more in the present timeline. There’s no way someone like the Croat hasn’t dug into the mother/son issues to get to him.
As for the pairing of Maggie and Negan, it’s just as great as it was the last week. The series also continues to look better and more cinematic than anything we’ve seen from the Walking Dead franchise thus far. That being said, I can’t be the only one who’s absolutely dreading how things will go now that they’ve added some new characters. Amaia is fine, but Tomasso feels like he was generated by an AI working off New York stereotypes.
I’m also a little confused about why the Croat’s crew ran off after Negan went old school on them. What he did was gross and certainly upsetting, but it’s hard to imagine that people who work for such a deranged man would flee in fear instead of seek revenge — especially when they had Negan heavily outnumbered. At least the scene gave us that great moment between him and Maggie after it was over.
While all this was going on, we got an entirely predictable subplot with Ginny and a genuinely intriguing storyline for Marshal Armstrong. It’s a bit convenient that his brother also happened to live in New York, but not so much that it lessened the impact of him discovering Joel’s body. It was also a total gut punch watching Armstrong get put through the emotional wringer like that only to end up getting captured by the Croat.
Let’s hope his storyline leads to us seeing a lot more of Negan’s former associate and Hershel next week.
Next Episode: ‘People Are a Resource’
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