In the latest recap for “The Walking Dead,” Maggie teams up with Negan with idea to go after the Reapers and things go from bad to worse for Eugene in the Commonwealth…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
All of the various storylines that have been separated throughout the final season of “The Walking Dead” are starting to converge with only a couple of episodes left before a hiatus for the rest of the year.
Maggie is still leading a team towards Meridian with hopes of bringing down the Reapers but she’s also forced to answer some tough questions about her intentions as well as the relationship she’s forging with Negan moving forward.
Meanwhile, Daryl is still attempting to blend in with the Reapers so he can attempt to tear them apart from the inside out while also trying not to get himself killed if the psychotic soldiers find out he’s acting as an inside man for his friends.
And finally, Eugene, Princess, and Ezekiel are put to work on the border of the Commonwealth in order to start paying off their debt after breaking the rules in the community. Of course nothing that’s happening to them is as it seems and by the end of the episode, Eugene has made an egregious error that could put him and everyone back in Alexandria in peril.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “The Walking Dead” titled “Promises Broken”…
The Enemy of My Enemy
After reconnecting with Father Gabriel and Elijah, Maggie is determined to return to Meridian to take on the Reapers but she doesn’t exactly have a strategy in order to deal with the heavily-armed soldiers that have taken over the town. Maggie is so driven by anger and revenge that she’s losing sight of the bigger picture, which are the odds she’s up against with the Reapers.
Still, Maggie can’t turn back, especially knowing that the people in Alexandria are still starving.
Negan reminds her of the odds they’re up against while saying that he’s not going to follow her on a suicide mission that’s destined to fail. Tempers get heated but Negan eventually comes around by offering to help Maggie with her planned offensive against the Reapers but only if she agrees and promises to let go of her longstanding grudge against him for killing Glenn.
Negan is tired of constantly looking over his shoulder and just waiting for Maggie to stab him in the back.
She begrudgingly agrees to the terms but before anyone has a chance to think about what comes next, Maggie and the rest of the group are interrupted by a group of walkers drawn to their voices. One of the undead zombies happens to be the best friend of Elijah’s sister, who is still missing after the initial encounter with the Reapers before they arrived back at Alexandria.
Maggie and Elijah are forced to put her down before giving her a proper burial but as more walkers start to descend upon them, it gives her an interesting idea.
Maggie only has three people with her and they don’t have the weaponry to battle back against the Reapers, who are 20 soldiers deep with fortified walls and plenty of firepower at their disposal.
That’s when Maggie gets the idea to gather even more walkers and use Negan’s time as Alpha’s right hand man to coordinate the same kind of attack that kept the Whisperers thriving for so many years. Instead of killing the dead, Maggie decides to use the hordes of zombies to her advantage.
With Negan as the instructor, he helps Maggie capture some walkers and cut off their faces in order to build skin masks for everyone in the camp. Father Gabriel heads off to where the Reapers are stations so he can take a look at the positions they’ve made in the community while Maggie begins her training so that she can walk amongst the dead and they will follow her like an apocalyptic Pied Piper.
Sadly, Maggie’s zombie skills are lacking and when she nearly trips and falls, the walker used as her test nearly turns to bite her. As Maggie grows frustrated, Negan can only smirk because she’s now relying on him to orchestrate this plan because he lived with the Whisperers and he knows exactly how Alpha managed to control those monstrous hordes of zombies in order to aim them at the communities like a missile.
Finally with some trial and error, Maggie gets the hang of her zombie walking and that means it’s time to start gathering the walkers and corralling them in order to move onto phase two of her operation to go after the Reapers.
Later that day while Gabriel scopes out the Reapers camp and has a strange almost interaction with the priest working with the soldiers, Negan cooks up some sort of wild animal and shares the spoils of his kill with Maggie over a campfire.
While chatting over dinner, Negan reminds Maggie of the way they first met and the battles that were fought to protect a community. He also brings up the attack that Rick and the survivors launched on the Savior satellite station that truly ignited a war between their two communities.
Negan acknowledges that Rick and the others didn’t kill any children that day but by slaughtering a huge number of his people that he had no choice but to fight back and get vengeance by any means necessary. In fact, looking back on the situation, Negan actually expresses regret — that he only chose to kill Glenn and Abraham when he should have killed all of them.
In retrospect, Negan knows that leaving any of the survivors alive was just asking for trouble down the line and he paid for it with the Saviors being toppled and his leadership coming to an end. Negan promised to protect his people and he failed them — and no matter how much Maggie doesn’t want to hear it, that’s exactly what he was doing when orchestrating that set up, which ended with Glenn and Abraham dead.
Maggie can’t believe what Negan is saying but he responds by telling her that this newfound trust between them will only last if they are brutally honest with each other even if she doesn’t like the answers he’s giving her.
Not So Common Ground
Back at the Commonwealth, Eugene, Princess, Ezekiel and “Stephanie” have been forced to clean out buildings surrounding the community, which could then lead to further expansion down the road. The group is paying penance after Eugene commandeered the Commonwealth radio in order to reach out to the people in Alexandria to let them know what’s happening.
While killing zombies, Ezekiel starts to struggle to breathe and Princess insists that he goes to the doctor at the Commonwealth to get checked out.
As for Eugene, he’s wondering how long they’ll be left out beyond the walls in order to pay off their debt and “Stephanie” can’t give him any solid answers because she’s undoubtedly attempting to procure more information for the leadership at the Commonwealth about this new group of survivors joining the community.
Inside the community, Yumiko is getting her new assignment, which will immediately make her part of the most powerful group inside the Commonwealth and she’ll eventually be working alongside Pamela Milton, who is the leader of the entire town.
But Yumiko’s patience is drawing thin with the rules and regulations for the Commonwealth, especially as her friends are now being punished for using the radio and they are being kept out beyond the walls and used as labor to clear out walkers from the buildings.
That’s when Yumiko finally demands a meeting with Pamela Milton and she’s granted her wish with an appointment later that day.
As she awaits the chance to meet with the leader of the Commonwealth, Yumiko spends some time with her brother, who is adamant about his place in the community while declining to ever reveal that he was a doctor before the world fell to ashes. Yumiko attempts to poke and prod at him for a more satisfying answer but Tomi answers her back rather emphatically that he’s left that life behind and he’s happy just being a baker these days.
Chances are there’s more to this story as well but we’ll find out more in the coming weeks.
Before the siblings can finish their conversation, a group of guards rushes up and snatches Tomi to take him into custody, much to the chagrin of Yumiko.
Growing more and more irate, Yumiko confronts Lance Hornsby — the man from the orientation video who has promised to help the newest members of the community after some of them get into trouble by breaking the law. Lance tells Yumiko that she only needed to stay patient and he would have delivered in due time but now she’s rattled a few more cages by demanding the meeting with Pamela Milton.
Eventually, Yumiko relents and allows Lance to continue working behind the scenes to get Eugene and the others freed of those criminal charges and he says that her brother will be returned home within a few hours.
Outside the walls, Ezekiel returns better than ever after his medical treatment but the entire group can’t be certain how much longer they’ll be stuck cleaning out the dead. That’s when Eugene and “Stephanie” spot a group of walkers moving towards a young preppy couple that walked by them earlier in the day as they enjoy a picnic lunch out in the open.
With no signs that the couple will react to the undead tumbling towards them, Eugene and “Stephanie” spring into action and take out the walkers. Stephanie ends up killing the final walker and the blood sprays all over the young woman, who screams and gasps at her clothes being ruined.
As for the young man, he berates Eugene for intervening because they had their own private security detail and even though nobody was rushing into save them, he’s still angry and entitled that these outsiders interfered. Eugene finally snaps and punches the guy in the face and he falls over screaming in pain and Mercer arrives just in time to looked shocked that such a thing happened.
Back in Pamela’s office, Yumiko arrives for her meeting with the boss and she meets her secretary — the woman who appears to be the real Stephanie — and they have a brief conversation. Just then, the real Stephanie gets a call that Pamela Milton will have to reschedule the meeting because her son has just been assaulted outside the walls of the Commonwealth.
In other words, Eugene punched Pamela’s son.
Without further ado, let’s introduce Sebastian Milton — Pamela Milton’s son and the most spoiled, entitled brat you’ll probably ever meet on “The Walking Dead.” In the comics, Sebastian is a constant pain in the ass and his thirst for revenge is so great that he actually ends up killing Rick Grimes in the second to last issue of the entire series.
Sebastian is then tried and convicted and he’s sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Now none of that will spoil the show because Rick Grimes isn’t part of “The Walking Dead” currently so it’s impossible for Sebastian to kill him but that should let you know the depths that this little shit will go to get his point across. He’ll instantly become one of the most disliked characters in the history of the show.
Later, Lance Hornsby goes to visit Eugene in a jail cell and he tells him that assaulting Pamela’s son is an incredibly bad idea and the charges against him have just increased. The only way out would be to tell them where his community and the rest of his people are located.
Eugene eventually relents and decides to play ball — and it’s clear that this has been the manipulation the entire time. The leadership at the Commonwealth knew that Eugene and his group came from a larger community but all of this time has been spent putting them in a situation where they’d have no choice but to give up the location of their home.
What exactly the Commonwealth plans to do with that information remains to be seen.
From a Whisper to a Scream
As Daryl eyes a pantry filled with food for all of the Reapers, he’s soon interrupted when a pair of the soldiers returns from a scouting mission to look for Maggie and her followers. They report back that there’s no sign of them and no trace of where they’ve gone, which makes Pope absolutely irate.
Leah does her best to calm him down but instead Pope tells her to take Daryl and the two of them go looking for these people instead.
Outside, Daryl and Leah talk while traveling back down to the other nearby communities in hopes of finding Maggie and her friends. Along the way, Daryl happens upon a single man hiding in the bushes and he claims that he was out scavenging for food for his son and injured wife.
After calling it in on the radio, Pope orders them to just kill the man and be done with it but Daryl offers to follow him back to his wife and son just to see if he’s telling the truth.
When they finally arrive, the man uncovers a hidden spot where he has indeed stashed his family except there’s one problem — his wife has been bitten and she’s going to turn into a walker.
Daryl and Leah order the man to grab his son and run away as fast as they can. As much as he doesn’t want to leave his wife behind, the man and his son rush out of the building, which leaves Daryl and Leath to deal with the woman who has been bitten.
Leah does her best to put the woman out of her misery but as tears roll down her cheek, she can’t pull the trigger on her rifle. So Daryl ends up putting an arrow into her head and kills the woman before she can turn.
At that moment, Daryl realizes this might be his best opportunity to tell Leah the truth about what he’s doing out here but he doesn’t get the chance because they get a frantic call from Pope back at the compound.
After mastering her Whisperer walking skills, Maggie and her group have managed to build a rather large herd of zombies that they’ve collected from all the surrounding communities. Among them is Elijah’s sister and he’s shocked to see her already transformed into one of the undead but Maggie clutches his hand before he freaks out and cries out after realizing she’s gone.
Maggie, Negan and the others continue to move through the herd as they all move towards the target — the Reapers’ compound.
A quick look at the size of the herd proves that Maggie and Negan were quite a team because they’ve been a massive horde of zombies that would make Alpha proud. Now they are directing it at the Reapers with hopes that this will stop them once and for all and hopefully it will allow Maggie and the others to get inside, steal all of the supplies and return with them to Alexandria.
“The Walking Dead” will return with a brand new episode next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.
