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The Walking Dead 8.10 Review – ‘The Lost and the Plunderers’
Loading...Welcome back Walking Dead fans! This week’s episode takes on a unique, chapter-like format as we move into a post-Carl world and focus on, sure enough, the lost and the plunderers. But who’s who?
The plot: Michonne and Rick leave Carl’s grave, load up on supplies, and are delayed in leaving in a failed attempt to save a gazebo Carl liked from burning. But with walker starting to pour into the ruins of Alexandria, they are on the road soon. Rick isn’t ready to talk, and isn’t ready to read the letter Carl wrote to him. Aaron and Enid are nearly executed by the Oceansiders for the death of Natania at Enid’s hands, but they manage to merely get kicked out (again) and told not to come back. Aaron stays behind, however, and Enid goes back to update Maggie. In the Saviors camp, Hilltop’s gift of the undead Savior hostage is received. Simon is told to go deal with the Scavengers but to kill only one to make his point with them. However, when he isn’t satisfied with Jadis’s apology, he kills everyone but her, but doesn’t tell Negan about it. When Rick and Michonne arrive at the trash heap, they find Jadis alone, but Rick isn’t interested in taking her with them when they leave. To survive, Jadis must instead lure her people, now walkers, into a grinder to be rid of them. Finally, Rick reads the letter Carl wrote to Negan, then calls Negan on the walkie to tell him Carl is dead. He says that Carl wanted them both to stop and make peace–but that this isn’t possible, and he will still kill Negan. Negan, legitimately saddened by this news, blames Rick for Carl’s death and tells him to stop before anyone else he loves dies.
The change in format tonight intrigued me. At first I thought the characters getting title cards and segments were ones Carl had written letters to, but Simon throws that theory off. With that notion dismissed, I enjoyed how we got essentially the same scenes and storylines as would’ve gotten in any episode, but instead of being intercut with one another, each was a single focused piece. It was nice to get that kind of focus at this point in the story, though. There were a lot of moving parts in the first half of the season, and we didn’t see most of them last episode, so this was a good way to remind us what else is going on right now with everyone else. And when considering the title of the episode, and it’s source–the sign outside Alexandria that reads “Mercy for the lost and vengeance for the plunderers”–I found myself considering which of those each of these people is.
It’s quickly clear that Carl’s statement/request that Michonne needed to be the strong one for Rick after he was gone was very necessary, because Rick is already shutting down and turning towards anger and violence. There’s some struggle in him to honor Carl’s request, but this is a pain unlike any he’s had to deal with before, and there are many ready targets for him to hate and blame for that loss. One of those, of course, is Rick himself. Maybe the biggest one. Negan’s blaming Rick is cold and calling him a failure as a father is exceptionally harsh, especially given the source (more on that later), but we all know Negan is only vocalizing what Rick is already thinking and feeling. No matter how peacefully Carl went out, Rick was always going to blame himself for what happened, for all the reasons Negan states aloud.
Michonne, meanwhile, is more introspective in this aftermath and focusing more on the point Carl made about how they all have a choice. She’s managing her grief, but she’s also more ready to try and talk about it than Rick. I think this also has to do with the arc she had in the first half of the season. She started off angry and obsessed with seeing things through to the end, but she saw what that obsession was doing to her, Tara, Rosita, and Darryl. She already chose to let go of that fixation, and that has to make a huge difference here. If this had happened while she was still in that bad place, she might be right alongside Rick in calling for Negan’s head more than ever as the only possible way to end this war.
Negan, meanwhile, has been cast in an interesting light of being more humane lately. The party line of the Saviors has never really changed, but with the all-out war going on, all the active fighting, and dying, he’s been stressing more than ever that they’re called the Saviors for a good reason. He’s especially insistent with Simon about not killing any more people than is necessary, which makes me even more convinced that Simon is the previous, bloodthirsty leader Negan referred to once before. Simon is proving more and more to be his foil, in fact. He was previously ready and willing to wipe out Hilltop, proposed just killing everyone to Negan, and even leaving this whole mess behind them and moving on somewhere else. His bloodbath way of dealing with Jadis and her crew leaves no doubt that he means every word he’s said. While Simon may have been having fun with Gregory and taunting him, there is quite an edge of anger and blood thirst behind that. I don’t think Simon is capable of overtaking Negan as the main antagonist here, but his insubordinance certainly makes things interesting. In tonight’s episode, he’s the one who most fits the label of plunderer. But it’s also worth noting that he’s not wrong about Negan’s particular message not being taken well by anyone here.
As promised, let’s talk about Negan’s reaction to hearing about Carl’s death. It’s the most human thing we’ve seen from him. His guard is down, and when he says he’s sorry to hear this, when he talks about what he thought about Carl, it’s the most genuine thing he’s ever said. There’s no acting or pretense or bluster. It’s a moment that, had Rick been otherwise inclined, could’ve gone in another direction all together. But once Rick brought it back to killing Negan to end this, that peace was not an option despite his son’s wishes, that went away. For now, at least. And Negan responded as he does, pivoting and manipulating, reading people like he does so well and using that to get his way. Right now, he’s angry at this loss and he blames Rick, yes. He wants Rick to be defeated and broken down. He wants Rick to feel the way he feels. But this is the part Negan isn’t aware of, I think. Negan still thinks an awful lot of himself, and he fancies himself someone who could’ve been a better father to Carl, even though, as far as we know, he has never been one himself. It’s an easy claim to make from that position, and this is why he calls Rick a failure of a father. He believes that right now, sure, but I suspect that further down, Negan also wonders if this isn’t his fault, too. Sure, he can blame Rick and his choices, but the fact is that Negan put Rick into the position of having to make those choices. It’s too tangled up to truly blame any one person, but right now, these two sure as hell are going to try.
Jadis getting her own ‘chapter’ was a bit unexpected, but I actually enjoyed it. Partly, yes, because I’m glad to see the trash people gone and to see Jadis brought low. She even talked normally instead of in her weird off-putting, pronoun-less way! That was huge. As was Rick finally refusing to deal with her; this isn’t the kind of reaction she expected from him, but yeah, she’s earned this treatment. Things could be very different right now if she hasn’t betrayed them in the first place, after all. Now that she has nothing to offer him, Rick’s done putting up with her. This is partly because of where Rick is emotionally right now, though I still don’t blame him. But maybe with how he treated her, now that her pride has cost her so dearly and…viscerally, she’ll turn over a new leaf and change now, too. Once she’s done eating all that applesauce, anyways.
Also Aaron and Enid did some stuff at Oceanside and didn’t get killed. I’m glad they’re not dead, but I would really like to stop getting the run around about whether they’ll join or not. Enid had a pretty solid message about not killing strangers, but instead knowing who your enemies really are, though. Also, the helipad is real! Meaning that helicopter we saw in the first half of the season was too! But where was it going? Who was in it?
