Summary
I’m not sure The Walking Dead: Dead City is getting any better in Season 2, but as of Episode 3, it’s definitely getting weirder.
Good news, those few remaining viewers who consume The Walking Dead: Dead City out of choice instead of professional obligation — Episode 3 isn’t quite as stupid as the previous installment was. I’d say this constituted some kind of improvement for Season 2 overall, but let’s not be hasty, since “Why Did the Mainlanders Cross the River?” substitutes some of the stupid for an extra helping of weirdness, which doesn’t exactly help.
We’re once again flitting back and forth between Maggie and Negan, though their story strands come really close to overlapping here. But into that familiar format is sprinkled the new gimmick of flashbacks to Hershel’s time as a captive of the Dama, helping to flesh out some of his present-day oddness and justify the odd psychological “pull” that Manhattan seems to have over him. Predictable spoiler alert: It seems like he has been deftly manipulated into believing that the city is what’s compelling him when, in reality, he just has a bit of a Stockholm Syndrome connection to the Dama for incredibly flimsy reasons.
We’ll get to this. But in the meantime, we’re going to the park.
Central Park, overrun by nature, is the primary setting for this episode, though it’s so dense with foliage that it isn’t really recognisable as anything specific. The remaining New Babylon troops are dropping like flies, which makes it all the stranger that Maggie is still tagging along with them to acquire the methane in spite of it being quite obvious that the whole thing’s a suicide mission. The arguments put forward for Maggie staying aligned with Perlie are weak, and the over-the-top cartoon villainy of Narvaez just screams bad writing.
During a slapstick-y jaunt through head-high fields, Hershel gets separated from the others, who emerge into “The Cafe on the Lake”, a former eatery that has been turned into a home base for a group of survivors who have embraced Mother Nature to an almost cultish extent. Their leader is Roksana, and she’s surprisingly accommodating, even if she isn’t buying the New Babylon sales pitch. The cafe is ringed by the dead in the park, which is itself ringed by the Dama’s forces, so these guys are doubly insulated and are completely left alone because the park is so dangerous to navigate that it isn’t worth hassling them.
Maggie, predictably, wants to set out and find Hershel, but Perlie, bizarrely, expects her to be okay with sitting around and letting Roksana’s people do it. Have these two ever met before? It’s so bizarre that he would think this.
Anyway, this is about the stage of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2, Episode 3, where Maggie and Negan’s stories overlap. Negan is out with the Croat and Waylen looking for the kid he said he saw to justify halting the ferry bombardment. He suggests going to check out the park and determine if any of the Croat’s Burazi made it through, and Weylan is sent to keep an eye on him. Negan takes the first opportunity to let some walkers eat him, which solves one problem, though it’s still a little unclear what his eventual end goal is supposed to be.
A still from The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 | Image via AMC
Either way, Waylen, chewed up but not quite zombified, manages to stumble right onto Hershel and the girl who rescued him, Joan. He pins Joan to the floor by skewering her leg with his manky spear, and is about to round on Hershel when Negan kills him from behind. But then he leaves. Hershel drags a badly wounded Joan back to the cafe, initially keeping quiet about who saved them. When he eventually lets on, Maggie immediately gets obsessive about things, which justifies why he kept the information quiet in the first place.
During the flashback sequences, it’s made pretty obvious that Hershel doesn’t really care much about Negan and that Maggie has been projecting her own trauma onto him, which is why the Dama was able to manipulate him so easily by showing interest in his art. Through the flashbacks there’s a very strong implication that Hershel is working on the Dama’s explicit instructions as part of some ongoing quest to rebuild Manhattan according to his idealistic sketches, and you can tell because when Maggie finally confronts him about being “pulled” by the city, he babbles some highfalutin rhetoric about freeing the island from its pain. Absolutely bonkers. And his drawings aren’t even very good.
In case you were wondering about how bizarre Roksana’s group really is, you need look no further than their approach to death. When it becomes obvious that Joan isn’t going to survive, the group all provide a chorus of lamenting moans and Iranian folk songs while Roksana uses a sharp rock to carve out her heart. The heart is subsequently offered to the walkers on a plinth, and Joan becomes a walker to roam among them. Everything is fine!
This is about where The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2, Episode 3 ends. Narvaez, in a moment of true psychopathy, wants to forcibly assimilate the group into New Babylon while they’re distracted by Joan’s injury, but Perlie is able to talk her down — for now. I genuinely can’t wait for this character to die. Negan also returns to the Croat and tells him that the park’s a death trap and should be left alone. The Croat isn’t buying Weylan’s supposed accident for a second, especially since Negan still has his blood on his hands, but that information is filed for later. Like Negan himself, it isn’t entirely clear what the Croat’s endgame is. I think usurping the Dama might be it.
If you’re wondering what the big deal is with so many of the bodies in Central Park having been killed in the same way, leaving a giant entry wound, so am I. Maybe we’ll find out in the next episode. The explanation can’t be any stranger than what we’ve seen already, can it?
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