The Walking Dead
Well, The Walking Dead is about to return in just under a week for a set of six rather unusual episodes that serve as a new sort of ending for season 10, ahead of the show’s 11th and final expanded season (before it just breaks into spin-offs).
These six episodes were filmed during the awkward quarantine/pandemic period, making use of those filming restrictions, and serve to fill in some gaps for past events, mainly. I have seen the first two of these episodes, the first focused on Maggie, the second on Daryl, and can report back loose thoughts on what I’ve seen. I can’t really go too much into them because of certain restrictions, so pardon me for being vague.
Season 10 Episode 17 – Home Sweet Home
So, I thought we might be getting a full-on flashback episode for Maggie and where she’s been, but that isn’t in fact how this plays out. This episode does begin with an encounter between Maggie and Negan, which AMC has hyped up a bit, but it lasts two seconds and it’s clear there’s going to be more to come. Maggie talks later about how she told her son Herschel that the “bad man” who killed his dad got what he deserved, but now she’s returned to find Negan a free man and acting like part of the family.
While this is not a flashback episode about where Maggie was, it does fill in those gaps all the same. We learn that she separated from Georgie and ended up finding a new community. But then they were raided by a new group called the Reapers, and killed and scattered. Only a handful of people from Maggie’s old community are left, including the guy in the iron mask. We do see who is under that mask this episode and learn a bit more about them, and I’ll say it’s certainly not what I was expecting from the character.
The episode culminates in a frantic search of Herschel as Maggie returns to find her safe house burned down, meaning the Reapers have found them. I won’t go into what happens at the very end of all this, but sufficed to say I am very curious to learn more about the Reapers, and I wonder if they’re going to be a villain group for at least this mini stretch of six episodes, if not a factor in season 11 (though you would imagine the Commonwealth will take up most of the oxygen there). All in all, I thought this was a pretty solid episode.
The Walking Dead
Season 10 Episode 18 – Find Me
Alright now this one is a flashback episode, one where we see Daryl literally living in the woods for years after Rick supposedly blew up on the bridge, as Daryl tries to find him, or at least his corpse. I guess I hadn’t realized that Daryl was separated from the group for so long, but it turns out he wasn’t alone.
This is a quasi-origin story for Dog, who Daryl meets as a puppy, but then over the years, sees him grow. Turns out Dog belongs to a woman who lives in a nearby cabin, Leah, who initially distrusts Daryl, but eventually is the only other person he sees in the woods besides Carol coming to visit. There’s more to say about Leah, but I’ll have to wait about that. And I’ll have to wait to explain why I didn’t exactly like this episode, as that gets into spoiler territory.
We did sort of get a glimpse at what a Daryl/Carol spin-off would look like, which has been planned after the end of The Walking Dead itself. Clearly they have chemistry, always have, and I imagine that will be a good time. They’re kind of at each other’s throats for much of this particular episode, though, with Daryl in particular throwing some brutal (verbal) jabs her way.
I’ll have more to say about these episodes after they actually air as there is a lot more to say, but that’s all I can really discuss now. I’m certainly looking forward to the full batch, and it should tide us over until the show itself returns for a proper season.
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