The Walking Dead: Omega (9x10)

If someone had told me the premise of this episode, I would have rolled my eyes and assumed I was in for a real snooze fest. A whole episode about Lydia, the Whisperer that is being held prisoner at Hilltop? Why should I care? But, surprisingly... I thought this episode was pretty strong!

Cons:

From a narrative standpoint, I'm glad that Lydia didn't turn on Henry when they briefly left the prison cell. It's more interesting that way. But in-universe, I was furious at Henry for being such a little idiot and letting Lydia out! I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's a moron. It's not that he's well-meaning or sees the best in people. It's that he's criminally naive and he could have gotten someone killed. I was so furious when he let Lydia out of the cell.

I got a little lost in the weeds with who all had gone out looking for whom. We know that Luke is with the Whisperers now, and that Tara went out looking, but then decided to turn back, but then the other new kids sneak out to find them anyway... it was all a lot of back and forth that probably could have been compressed or cut from the story. The end result was the same - the Whisperers have captives, and they've come to Hilltop looking for Lydia. The rest is just noise.

Pros:

I thought for sure that Lydia's backstory was going to be an uninteresting waste of my time, but it super wasn't. I was completely engrossed. The details almost aren't important. The point is, we see Lydia's father being a brute and an idiot, but slowly we start to realize that it's actually Lydia's mom who was the abusive one, while her father was the one she could always turn to. She was a little girl when the Walker outbreak began, and she has a hard time remembering the details of her early life, partially just as a consequence of being so young, but also clearly because of the trauma.

What I found really interesting was seeing a snippet of time back before all of the rules of the Walkers were known. These people don't get what happens when you leave a corpse unattended without stabbing it through the brain. They don't know that everyone wakes up as a Walker after dying. They haven't even quite given up on government assistance of some sort. It's early days. It was fun to flash back so far, especially since we've recently done quite a time jump in our main story. It heightened the tension in a unique way.

Since the topic of abuse was so heavily featured here with Lydia's story, we got a chance to look closely at Daryl's past in an interesting way. Sure, Henry is mostly intolerable, but I actually really liked the moment when he asked Daryl if he'd had someone in his life that hurt him, like Lydia had. It added an interesting dimension to Daryl's treatment of Lydia. The fact that they shared a similar trauma in childhood didn't make him go easy on her; it just contextualized the gravity of the situation for him, and made him all the more determined to do right by his people.

On the flip side of that, Henry's childhood trauma helped him to empathize. He knows that a big part of what saved him wasn't just the Kingdom giving him a haven from the Walkers. It was the kindness and the nurturing spirit of Ezekiel, and later Carol. He wants to offer that same kindness to Lydia. He knows that being out there in the messy world can really screw you up, but that it's possible to come back from it. I really liked that perspective on things, and I feel like if we could see more of Henry's inner life in this way, maybe he could actually become an interesting character.

Another little moment that I enjoyed was Henry telling Daryl the story of overhearing Carol and Ezekiel talking about her hair. She always wore it short because Ed, her first husband, would grab on to her long hair to yank her around. It took her a long time to start trusting again, and grow it long. I'm not sure how I feel about Carol's post-time-jump hairdo, but hearing the story behind it really adds a lot of weight to that choice. Henry telling Daryl that he's happy Daryl is friends with Carol was also really sweet. Daryl's not the warmest of people a lot of the time, but Henry is smart enough to understand that Daryl is important to his mom.

That's all I've got. I missed checking in with Michonne and some of the other characters this week, but I'm sure we'll get that soon. The Whisperers were initially a big disappointment to me, because the Walkers actually evolving would have been way cooler. But now that we're learning a bit more about their leader, I'll admit I'm curious to find out more!

8/10