Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City concluded with three plot lines reaching critical junctures:
- After a rough start, Negan and Maggie befriended Amaia and her brother Tomasso, who agreed to have their crew help them get to the Croat.
- Following an emotional visit to his dead brother’s apartment, Marshal Armstrong was captured by the Croat.
- Ginny has predictably fled from the Hilltop colony in the hopes of reuniting with Negan.
This week, Negan and Maggie begin plotting against the Croat with their new friends. Meanwhile, Armstrong gets to see just how sadistic the Croat can be while Ginny continues her quest to be reunited with Negan.
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.
Dino Trouble
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
The episode opens with a flashback of Ginny’s time with Negan before Maggie showed up. Negan is frustrated at his inability to find a safe place for her and the girl’s inability to speak (despite it appearing that she genuinely wants to). We then see Negan’s mended heart shine through when he grudgingly agrees to look for Ginny’s lost stuffed dinosaur…which ends up being at the bottom of her bag.
Despite being all types of frustrated with her, he still maintains a fatherly presence. After repairing a tear on the toy (which Ginny is visibly grateful for), Negan teaches her a whistle that his wife used to do when she was sick with cancer and needed something. He tells Ginny to use that whistle anytime she needs him.
In the present, Ginny arrives at the Hudson River across from Manhattan. Using a storage container for a boat and a stick for a paddle, she begins making her way across the river toward the city. After she arrives, Ginny ends up losing her stuffed dinosaur while fleeing from a herd of walkers to a hiding spot. Before she can retrieve it, a scavenger picks up the dinosaur and walks away.
Broken Bonds
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Over on the island, Amia, Tomasso, and Luther successfully hunt and kill a deer. As Luther prepares the animal to be butchered/eaten, Negan notices him using beeswax to treat some cuts. When he asks to use some himself, Luther refuses, which pretty much guarantees these two will have some beef later.
Meanwhile, Amaia explains how terrible things were when they were kids and the zombie outbreak first occurred – especially after the military showed up and destroyed all the bridges. Things started to get a little better as people learned to survive, but that all changed when the Croat arrived and began recruiting folks. Anyone who didn’t sign up was hunted and captured. The only person who ever escaped after being caught was Tomasso — something Amaia says was due more to luck than anything.
Later, the group surveys Madison Square Garden, which is surrounded by walkers following a vehicle that blares out music to keep them moving. As they debate whether breaking in is even possible (and Tomasso waffles on if he can help them do it), Negan describes how a certain leader of the Sanctuary was taken down by a group of people determined not to let a tyrant control their lives. This makes Tomasso consider trying again after talking things over with his people — a decision Luther does not seem pleased with.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
After talking things over, Tomasso explains to Negan and Maggie how he got away from the Croat. After one of his nightly torturings, a zombie happened to get inside his cell. In the ensuing commotion, he ran out and used the old Penn Station tunnels/framework to make his escape.
Once he begins talking logistics for getting to the Croat, Maggie decides it’s the perfect time to mention that he and Negan used to be well-acquainted — although she does point out that Negan shot his ear off. This ticks off Luther even more, which leads to him angrily admitting that he thinks the whole mission is a waste of time. Even if they do manage to bait the Croat and get him away from his goons, it’s very likely that Maggie’s son is already dead.
Later, Negan finds Maggie to give her a hat he found like the one Hershel used to wear. He also assures her that Luther is wrong about her son being dead and that their plan will work. Maggie responds by finally opening up a little. She tells Negan that when the Croat came to their gates, she’d told Hershel to hide. Due to their strained relationship, he refused, which resulted in her lashing out at him before he was taken.
Negan responds by finally revealing what happened to Annie and his son, who we learned is named Joshua. They were living in a cabin outside New Babylon when Annie was robbed, beaten, and raped by five men during a trip into town — one of whom was a New Babylon marshal. Predictably (and understandably), Negan killed them all, which put him and his family on the run. As life became more difficult for the people he loved, he put Annie and Joshua on a wagon to Missouri and promised to be right behind them.
Instead of following after them, however, he stayed behind to keep the heat solely on him. To this day, Negan lives with the hope that his family is okay — the same hope he tells Maggie that she can’t give up.
Fight Club
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Inside Madison Square Garden, the Croat and his goons arrive with the captive marshal in tow. After being led past dead bodies stored in large vats of liquids, he’s brought to one of the arena’s skyboxes and handcuffed to the railing. Later, a man enters the room, sets down two gourmet platters of food along with some wine, and puts on some old Croatian choir music to set the mood.
The Croat walks in and pats his chef/servant on the cheek before offering Armstrong a chance to sit and eat with him. He also reveals that before the world fell, he was an alternative energy researcher. This led him to consider what the most abundant resource in the world currently is (which is obviously the undead). From there, the Croat theorized that the methane produced from their bodies breaking down could be turned into liquid fuel.
Once his hypothesis turned out to be correct, the Croat used this newfound power to help build an empire/sanctuary on the island of Manhattan where all are welcome — including the marshal.
When Armstrong refuses to speak, the Croat decides to start dinner without him. Things become even more tense when he cuts into his meat and finds a maggot inside it. The Croat immediately blames his chef/servant, who he forces to swallow the key to Armstrong’s handcuffs before beating him to death and departing.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
That evening, the Croat heads down to an octagon in the center of the arena and whips the surrounding crowd into a fury. As they chant “Doma Smo!” (which roughly translates to “We Are Home” in Croatian), he tells his followers to celebrate the life of one of their fallen people. He also uses Negan’s “people are a resource” mantra, but in a very specific context. Instead of their skills being a commodity, he’s actually referring to the undead’s value as a source of methane.
The Croat then forces Marshal Armstrong to inhale a large quantity of methane through a gas mask before throwing him into the octagon and chaining him to a pole. The marshal then has to fight the zombified chef/servant in what could be generously described as a diminished state.
Luckily, the marshal is a total badass.
Armstrong uses his handcuffs to immobilize the walker and decapitate it. He then picks up a broken beer bottle someone threw at him, splits the zombie’s midsection open, and digs out the key. After getting himself free, a couple of fresh zombies are thrown into the octagon, which he proceeds to beat to death with one of his shoes.
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Later, when the marshal is placed back in the skybox, the Croat comes in and compliments him on his performance. He also justifies the octagon spectacle as a necessary form of barbarism to keep the masses entertained. He couples that with the story of how his wife and three children were cooked and eaten by fellow survivors while he was out looking for supplies. Lucky for him, he ended up meeting a man (Negan) who taught him how to properly protect the people he cared for.
The Croat then wonders what Armstrong might be protecting — specifically the item hiding inside the boot he decided not to use for zombie bashing. He has one of his goons retrieve the paper with the address from the marshal’s shoe, which turns out to be a heartbreaking plea for help from his brother. Upon hearing the Croat read it, Armstrong finally speaks, demanding that he stop before revealing that he came to Manhattan to bring a man named Negan to justice.
As you might imagine, this piques the Croat’s curiosity.
Grated Nerves
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
That evening, Maggie and Negan share a solemn dinner with their new crew. Before everyone heads to bed, the scavenger who picked up Ginny’s stuffed dinosaur arrives, revealing herself as a member of Amaia and Tomasso’s people. Maggie immediately recognizes the toy, which the scavenger gives to her.
Later, Negan is in the kitchen searching for possible melee weapons when he’s confronted by Luther, who demands he and Maggie leave that night. In addition to thinking he’s put their people on a suicide mission, Luther also found Negan’s wanted poster that Maggie gave him.
Negan attempts to de-escalate the situation, but Luther refuses to back down. This leads to a fight in which Negan ends up killing the man with a cheese grater (with an assist from an exposed pipe).
Meanwhile, Ginny watches from a hiding spot as Maggie steps outside and burns her stuffed dinosaur inside a trash can.
The Verdict
The Walking Dead: Dead City (AMC)
Yikes. You know things are heavy (and more than a little messed up) when Negan appears somewhat sympathetic for killing a dude while Maggie looks like a total monster for burning a stuffed animal.
I actually understand where Luther was coming from. If you remove our knowledge of Negan and Maggie’s backstory from the equation, then he had every right to question why his crew was helping them with such a deadly mission — especially after finding the wanted poster.
To be honest, I’m still struggling to wrap my head around why so many folks that Negan and Maggie just met would be willing to potentially sacrifice themselves. I get that Negan helped them and that Maggie’s story is heartbreaking, but the show really hasn’t done enough to make the loyalty from Tomasso and Amaia’s group feel organic. I also don’t buy that it’s because they lost so much in the last attack. These are folks who have been through a lot of awfulness over the years already.
Luther’s wariness of Negan and Maggie is far more believable than the way anyone else in his group is behaving.
All that being said, this episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City was once again packed with incredible character moments. The conversation where Negan revealed what happened to Annie and his son was particularly gut-wrenching. It was also enough to make us mad at Negan until we saw how he was with Ginny before Maggie found them.
Meanwhile, Gaius Charles has taken what easily could’ve been a wasted storyline and elevated it significantly — this time with only a few lines of dialogue. It’s a bit contrived how Armstrong’s story is lining up with the Croat’s, but that’s easy to forgive when both characters’ narratives continue to become more intriguing. I also appreciate that the episode made the Croat both intelligent (via the methane fuel production) and sympathetic (via what happened to his family) while simultaneously ramping up his barbarism.
It’s just a shame that we don’t get to see some of that play out via his interactions with Hershel.
Perhaps the decision to not show him was made so that Maggie’s fear about her son being dead felt more impactful — although I highly doubt anyone watching thinks he’s gone to that magic dumpster in the sky. Considering how little we’ve gotten to see of Hershel (especially as a teenager), his showing up every once in a while would do a lot more to raise the stakes than putting Maggie through a red herring ringer.
Thankfully, The Walking Dead: Dead City is still interesting enough to watch and enjoy.
Next Episode: ‘Everybody Win a Prize’
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