In “The Walking Dead” recap, Princess fights for her freedom after she’s captured along with the other survivors by the security guards from the Commonwealth…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Following a less than spectacular episode of “The Walking Dead” a week ago, the latest bonus edition of the series failed to deliver in similar fashion.
This particular installment followed up on the penultimate episode from season 10 where Eugene led a group including Ezekiel and Yumiko to Charleston, West Virginia where he promised to meet up with a woman named Stephanie, who he has been chatting with over the radio for several months. Along the way, the group ran into a woman calling herself Princess, who clearly had spent a little bit too much time by herself since the zombie apocalypse first began.
Eventually, Princess was invited to join them on the journey to West Virginia where Eugene was convinced that Stephanie would serve as salvation to the survivors after a war against the Whispers.
Instead, the group found themselves surrounded by security forces all dressed like Stormtroopers from “Star Wars” and held at gunpoint.
That’s where we pick up with the latest episode except there’s one serious problem — the entire point of the episode was to spend an hour inside Princess’ head rather than actually move the story forward so by the end, we’re pretty much right exactly where we left off before.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with an episode spent studying a particular character but we had only just met Princess at the end of season 10 and truthfully not much more was revealed other than the nasty tricks isolation had played with her mind while she was alone all that time with on one around. Beyond that, Princess’ fantasy about befriending the survivors and escaping their captors all took place in her own mind so by the time the episode ends, she’s still in the same situation as before with the guards from the Commonwealth — a place we’ll get to know intimately in the final season — take her into custody.
It’s been side before but sometimes less is more and so far these six bonus episodes of “The Walking Dead” haven’t felt very necessary.
With that said, let’s get to our recap of the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” titled “Splinter”…
The Princess Diaries
The episode essentially picks up just seconds after we last saw the group being surrounded by Stormtroopers at the rail yard in Charleston. What Eugene thought was going to be a friendly rendezvous has now transformed into all of his friends being captured by these mysterious security forces with no signs of Stephanie anywhere around.
For Princess, the entire ordeal is rather traumatic as she tries to reach for a gun belonging to one of the stormtroopers, only to have them pull away and another hit Yumiko in the face with the butt of his rifle when she tries to help. From there, everyone in the group is separated and placed into different train cars.
If there’s one thing “The Walking Dead” loves, it’s train cars and storage containers being used as prison cells.
Of course, Princess doesn’t like being surrounded by four walls closing in on her because she’s claustrophobic, which leads to her literally picking at a wall with her fingernails until chipping through to find a glimpse of the outside. That’s when she hears Yumiko’s voice as she struggles to stay away after getting hit with the rifle.
Princess ends up talking to keep her company and that’s where she tells a story about a splinter she got in her hand as a kid — similar to the splinter embedded in her finger right now after trying to pry the boards apart to escape.
It seems when Princess was a kid she had a splinter in her arm and she was forced to get medication for the infection, which kept her from going to school. Princess loved school because it wasn’t home because as she puts it ‘home was no Bueno.’
But her mother eventually allowed her to return to school while the arm was still healing and Princess ended up getting another infection, this time even worse than before. It was so gross that her stepfather wouldn’t allow her to eat at the dinner table with them and he instructed her to go in the garage by herself.
When Princess spoke out against her stepfather, he cracked her across the mouth. When she pled with her mother to take her side in the argument, her mother told her if she didn’t want to eat in the garage than I guess she doesn’t want to eat. Harsh and abusive upbringing for certain.
Later, Princess finds a conveniently loose board on the other side of the train car and from there she’s able to escape to reconnect with Eugene, who begs her not to start trouble because he believes these people are going to help them. She eventually concedes to his request and jumps back into her own rail car where the stormtroopers take her captive and bring her into a different location.
There’s she’s stripped down and showered against her will — that’s definitely creepy — as the stormtrooopers check her for bites. She’s then allowed to get dressed again before sitting down for an interview with a man hidden behind shadows as he asks her a bunch of questions like where she came from and what did she do before the zombie apocalypse started.
Princess answers a couple of questions but largely asks about her friends including Yumiko’s condition after she took a hard shot from the rifle out in the yard. Eventually, the stormtroopers get sick of hearing her questions with no answers and so they smack her around again before sending her back to the train car where she’s isolated again.
That’s when Princess is visited by Ezekiel, who has also made his own escape and he tries to convince her that they can leave together before anyone discovers them. Princess is more concerned with saving everybody including Yumiko and Eugene, which receives a harsh response from Ezekiel before he apologizes to her for his angry remark.
Finally, a stormtrooper arrives with some lunch for Princess but Ezekiel gets the drop on him instead.
From there, Ezekiel puts the guard in handcuffs while turning the tables and asking him questions. The stormtrooper tries to explain that this is all protocol because they have a very valuable place worth protecting and they can’t risk letting in the wrong people.
He also promises that Yumiko is almost certainly receiving treatment for any wounds she suffered because his people always help those in need. Still, Ezekiel and by extension Princess are skeptical that he’s telling them the truth versus what they want to hear in order to escape.
The stormtrooper even tells them that he’s nothing more than a rookie and will undoubtedly get into trouble for allowing them to get the jump on him. He then goes for his rifle after telling them it wasn’t loaded and that gets the guard tossed to the floor where Ezekiel begins to beat the living hell out of him.
Princess begs him to stop until she wakes up to what’s really been happening.
Ezekiel wasn’t in the car with her — she got the drop on the stormtrooper and Princess is the one beating him bloody. She looks around and sees that the crack in the wall where she was supposedly talking to Yumiko never existed and neither did the conveniently placed hole where she escaped in order to talk to Eugene.
In other words, everything that’s happened up to this point has all been inside Princess’ own mind.
In a panic, she makes a run for it but then Princess meets up with Ezekiel again — and obviously by this point we understand that it’s all a hallucination. He tells her to run away and don’t look back — she’ sonly known these people for a week so how much could they really matter to her?
Princess disagrees and feels like these people are already her friends. She returns to the train car and apologizes to the guard for her behavior while promising to make things right by answering all of their questions so the Commonwealth will accept her friends into their community.
She takes off his handcuffs and then hands over the rifle again as the stormtrooper gets himself reassembled. Princess then asks when she can see her friends and the guard answers back right now.
He opens the train car door and Princess sees Ezekiel, Yumiko and Eugene standing there with bags over their heads with guards surrounding them. A second later, a bag falls over Princess’ head as well and it appears all of them will be going on a journey together.
Once again, not the strongest episode much less an episode that really moved the story forward but it was an hour filled with a whole lot of Princess. Now it appears the entire group will soon be headed towards the Commonwealth — a massive community that will play a huge part when the final season begins later this year.
With only two bonus episodes remaining, “The Walking Dead” returns next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET with a Daryl and Carol-centric hour following the fallout from their argument a few weeks back.
