The Walking Dead: No Other Way (11x09)

I'm going to sound like a broken record here but I don't really caaarrrre. I mean, we're here in the final season, and there are so many pieces on the board, so much chaos, and so few characters I feel a real connection to. Let's talk about it.

Cons:

I've said this from the minute she came back, but I just don't find Maggie to be a very compelling character anymore. I think it's mostly that she went off and formed all of these bonds with people we don't know at all, and her motivation is now about protecting and/or avenging those people, and I don't feel an investment. Also, I find Negan to be more charismatic and interesting to watch that Maggie any day of the week, but I find it laughable that the show wants me to consider the relationship between these two characters as complicated or ambiguous. Negan murdered Maggie's husband in cold blood, while he was defenseless and on his knees, in front of all his loved ones, and he fucking enjoyed himself. There's no getting over that, and I wish the show would stop jerking us around on that.

At the end of the episode, we see that Negan is leaving because he knows Maggie will never forgive him and might one day decide to kill him after all. Smart move, Negan. We obviously haven't seen the last of him, though, which kind of makes me exhausted just thinking about it. He's like a cockroach.

And as I said, who even are these people that Maggie came back with? The guy who wants vengeance for his sister, the other people they've lost along the way... this whole episode, I was forgetting that Maggie's friends had a specific vendetta against the Reapers. This is all stuff that happened off-screen with characters I don't know. So therefore I don't care.

Alden gets a full on death scene and sobbing and a burial from Maggie and meanwhile I'm just like "whomst the fuck are you, really?" I mean, I remember, he's the guy from the Saviors who defected, but I don't really have an investment in Maggie and Alden's past relationship. This show has been on for too many years. I've stopped giving a fuck. Rest in peace Alden, I guess. I hardly knew ya.

Pros:

While ultimately my investment with this show is at an all time low, I will admit that this episode in specific had a good bit of momentum to it, and some moments where I did feel my interest engaged.

Of all the characters in this show I expected to get a bad-ass glow-up, Gabriel was pretty low on the list. While ultimately the Reapers are not a compelling villain to me, and I don't feel the tension of Daryl and Leah's relationship or any of that, I will admit that I enjoyed the Gabriel content in this episode. First, he and another "man of God" have a little confab about God's plan and their role in it, and then Gabriel fucking calls the man's bluff and guts him. It was intense. Then later, when Leah and Maggie are having their standoff, Leah is ordering her sniper to kill Maggie and the others, and we suddenly learn that Gabriel has dealt with the sniper and has control of the gun. I loved Negan's reaction to Gabriel being a bad-ass; their... well, I don't know if I'd call it "friendship", but whatever it is, I find it kind of funny.

We also have the clearest sign yet of Daryl's differing philosophy, where Maggie is set on killing the Reapers in revenge, and Daryl wants to create a world where violence between living people is no longer the norm. Daryl's right, of course: after everything else they all have to survive, what on earth is the point of continuing to fight? He seems to have nobody on his side a this point. Maggie and Gabriel are both pretty firmly on that "kill or be killed" train, and Leah was totally going to betray them and murder them all, so...

So now the absolutely uninteresting threat of the Reapers seems to be squashed, with just Leah left alive as a dangling thread for the future. 

Back in Alexandria, we've got the kids in serious danger, stuck in a house with a flooding basement and a zombie hoard. I will say the one moment of this episode where my heart did beat a little faster was Aaron going in through the window to save those kiddos... I found myself anxious about Aaron's fate. He's not the most interesting character in the world, but I do have some care for him and I didn't want him to die! I figured the kids were safe as soon as Aaron showed up, but his fate was much less clear - having to fight off the walkers in the water and then cling to the pipe above them was really scary and intense!

Really, though, the part of this episode that made me sit up and pay attention was the very ending, when we get a big ol' reunion, all of our core characters back in the same place, for the most part. Obviously I am weak for Daryl hugging Carol, I love that even at times when their relationship might be the slightest bit rocky, the relief of being back with one another breaks through. We also see Daryl hugging Lydia, which I love to see, they make for such a good unconventional family.

And of course the reunion with Connie! I know there is a lot of ~~discourse~~ in the fandom about shipping Daryl with Carol or with Connie, and while I firmly believe that Carol and Daryl have a beautiful love story for the ages, I was also incredibly touched by Daryl's reaction to seeing Carol! He drops the barrel of apples he was holding and rushes to her, pulling her in for a hug. We don't necessarily get to see Daryl smiling very often, and this was a lovely moment of happiness. Will they go anywhere with that, romantically? That remains to be seen... the vibes for me were very much in the realm of friendship, but I suppose time will tell.

And just when I thought the episode would end at this point, with the return of Maggie, Daryl, and Gabriel to their friends in Alexandria, we get even one more step of a reunion, with the return of Eugene! (And, ostensibly, the others who went with him, though we haven't seen them yet).

They arrive with a contingent from the Commonwealth, and they're here to help, apparently. Honestly, I was thrilled by this development, because The Walking Dead has the absolutely agonizing problem of dragging things on way too long. I was bracing myself for another three or four episodes with Eugene, Ezekiel, Yumiko, and Princess stuck with the Commonwealth before we might finally get another convergence of our full cast. But instead, here they are. Whether for good or ill (we'll get answers there in a second), it's a refreshing shot in the arm to keep moving the pieces around on the board.

And then of course we get a flash forward by six months, and we see that Daryl is with the Commonwealth, leading some sort of attack on Alexandria, with Maggie in charge there. This... could be interesting, or could be stupid, it really depends! I'm definitely ready to see how it goes, and open to being intrigued. My first questions are of course who else is on which side. Are Eugene and the others who brought the Commonwealth there still with the Commonwealth, or are they with the Alexandrians? What's the conflict about, and whose side will I be on, morally speaking, when I finally hear? What about other Alexandrians? Do we have any other defectors? So yeah, this certainly opens up a big ol' question for the future of the season, and while my complaints about this show hold true, I can still find some things to care about just a little. For a while longer, anyway.

8/10