I’m not one of the people who idolize The Walking Dead and I watched as little as possible to have any kind of conversation, but I’m actually not a fan. Still, on the Estúdio Pow! Podcast we dedicated an entire episode to the franchise and today I’m here to comment on The Walking Dead: Dead City.

The six-episode spin-off features two popular characters from the series, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), mortal enemies since Negan traumatized the young woman – and us – by massacring her poor husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun ), in season 7. Even with an arc of recovery that only the apocalypse gives people (being able to be a murderous psychopath for two long seasons, but becoming the hero redeemed by the love of children in two later), Maggie represents us because there is no way trust Negan after everything he’s done. Or is it possible?

Over more than a decade, The Walking Dead highlights the atrocities that humans are capable of perpetrating against each other even amid a planet dominated by zombies. Likewise, in the face of the material and moral destruction of the world and society, it is connections with survivors that also bring out the best in people, always allowing radical reinvention. Negan is one of the greatest examples of this.

Now that the franchise deals with multiple parallel stories, although the feeling of “already done” is real, it will require concentration to understand how they can eventually intersect and make sense.

All the clichés are present, including characters that appear and that we know are there as potential bodies to protect the protagonists, which is also a source of boredom because the construction of suspense is just a sequence of music and nervous looks, but whoever leads never is at serious risk. The feeling of security is one of the problems with The Walking Dead because there are no “Glenns” being killed all the time.

Dead City was not the first Walking Dead spinoff but rather Fear the Walking Dead. There was also The Walking Dead: The World Beyond and Tales of the Walking Dead, but now it’s effectively something that came straight from the “mothership”. The unlikely alliance of enemies Maggie and Negan has always been a bit suspicious and we finally got the ends here.

The plot is simple: Maggie’s son has been kidnapped by a former member of Negan’s crew. To locate him, still alive, she “hunts” the recovered killer who is running from the “law” and teams up to surrender for him.

Much of this argument that it would barely sustain six episodes only works because of Jeffrey Dean Morgan‘s undeniable charisma. Lauren Cohan is great, but he’s the one who brings the depth and convinces us both when he’s cruel and when he’s nice.

Negan’s transformation

It is necessary to remember or know that Maggie and Glenn fell in love at the beginning of The Walking Dead and that, as mentioned, Negan killed him deliberately and violently in season 7, when Maggie, pregnant, witnessed the attack without being able to do anything.

Negan was the leader of a post-apocalyptic cult called the Saviors and was eventually defeated and imprisoned by Rick Grimes and his allies. The Saviors scattered, some joining the survivors, others going their own way. Negan escaped, came back, escaped again, killed more people, was exiled, and accepted back into the group. He got married, had a son and lost both of them. He became another man, but this happened when Maggie was away, living in another community and when she returned she was shocked and mad at having to live with her husband’s killer. Not even a formal apology at the end of the series was enough, but together the two are the antagonists’ nightmare. Something that Dead City counted on to stretch the new plot into six long episodes.

For those who followed the series, even though Negan was transformed into a good man, it is impossible for Maggie to forgive him. And that’s why there’s something out of tune about the fact that she has to ask for help from the man who murdered the love of her life and work with him.

The “surprising” twist and the explanation of the ending

Here is pure spoiler. Dead City drags on for five episodes, repeating ALL the clichés of the genre until, in the final episode, there is a surprise twist and a hook for future seasons.

It was absolutely predictable, but in the last few minutes of the season, the observant Negan finally discovers that Maggie lied about her reason for bringing him to New York. The kidnapping of Hershel (Logan Kim) is true, but the ransom was to deliver Negan to his old enemy and thus take him to a new Sanctuary. Maggie didn’t know that part, it’s true, she believed they were going to kill Negan and even though she felt bad about using him, deep down she thought she deserved it.

“We could have saved Hershel. Because you and I together, we make an incredible team. The fact is Maggie, no matter what excuses I give you or how many excuses I offer, you can’t get over it. And you shouldn’t,” Negan tells Maggie, gaslighting the heroine absurdly.

The problem is that Maggie was used to create serious threats to any surviving community. The Croatian (Željko Ivanek) never wanted to kill Negan. The goal was to give Negan a new job and a new title. That’s right, he delivers the killer to the Lady (Lisa Emery), the new antagonist leader who in turn wants Negan to lead Manhattan in the inevitable “clash of civilizations” for natural resources. Manhattan discovered the technique of transforming corpses into energy using the methane they produce. This puts New York at war with the New Babylon Federation. Negan’s job is to unite the settlements under a single government.

I know it sounds like a joke, but it’s serious. Apparently, Negan is coerced into accepting the proposal because he feels regret for the people he killed in the past. It makes very little sense, but when she sees that the Lady has Hershel’s toe as a souvenir, she warns that if Negan doesn’t take the job, he will come back for more pieces of Hershel.

At this point, after what Maggie did, he should be saying “Be my guest,” but apparently he’s game. With the split screen of Maggie and Negan “sharing a face” there is a hint that the partnership between Negan and Maggie is possible and could invert the entire The Walking Dead franchise, two sides of the same coin.

The Walking Dead: Dead City is far from the narrative quality that marks the franchise as one of the most beloved on TV, but it also opens a new beginning. Do we really need it?

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