AMC has announced tonight’s premiere The walking Dead as “The Beginning of the End.” Technically, that’s true … but that’s all. Not a bad episode of TWD, only one very halfway. After ten seasons of wild deviation on this metaphorical, highway full of zombies, is fine with me.
Nothing really starts in “Acheron, Part One.” It’s really the other side of the bridge during which the previous six episodes were filmed quarantine—Connected to the pre-pandemic episodes of season 10. As such, the community of Alexandria is still sinking from the devastation caused by the Whispers, while Eugene, Kumiko, Ezekiel and Princess arrive at the Commonwealth, escorted by his fake Stormtroopers. They are two completely separate plots, so let’s start with the Alexandrians.
Carol and Daryl, who seem to have completely reconciled after theirs querell during bonus episodes, drive what can only be called theft to a military base. The loot: a large pile of MRE (food, ready to eat in army slang), needed because the Alexandrians have no food or crops after the Whisperer attack. The problem: the basis is absolutely flooded with zombie soldiers. The nonsense: all the zombies are taking a nap, so everyone has to put their feet on the base to prevent them from waking up. This becomes infinitely — and surely unnecessarily — more strange than falling directly into the room where all the zombies are sleeping abseiling through a skylight. Mission impossible-style. (What was the problem with the front door …?) Seeing everyone from end to end around the zombies is ridiculous, but it’s kind of ridiculously benign and funny.
This is also true when zombies inevitably wake up, not because of the noise they have been making, but from a drop of blood falling on one of the zombie’s cheeks. I’m not sure how it works exactly, but the group on the ground is thoroughly in charge of half the horde of non-sweating zombies before escaping, asking the question of why they didn’t just take care of them from the roof. in first place. Again, it’s silly, but it’s fun, and that’s something TWD he rarely manages to be. Unfortunately, things take a turn when they return to Alexandria and discover that they have only scored enough rations in a single week. When Maggie discovers that some of her former crew have found their way to the colony, she proposes a new quest: head to her old settlement, Meridian, and grab all the food she’s sure is still there after the zombies have invaded and it seems seemingly nihilistic. group of assassins called the Reapers (which we found inHome sweet home”). Few people think it’s a good idea, but most agree it’s the only way to keep everyone fed.
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Maggie, Daryl, Gabriel, Negan and several members of the police left, only to be forced to enter the Washington, DC subway line by which Maggie insists they will travel. Negan observes an elevated flood line in the tunnel, which means the water can spill at any minute, as the weather is superior, but as Negan gives the warning, everyone tells him to shut the hell up. . Negan also raises the highlight that no one knows if even the subway tunnel is open; they could march straight into a dead end. Negan gets the same answer.
Eventually, she has had enough of walking through a possible deadly trap and getting trapped and the palpable tension between him and Maggie, who has never forgiven her for killing her husband Glenn in the season seven premieres in 2016. He shows up when he confronts the woman who hates him and announces to everyone that the only reason Maggie brought him was the hope that they would kill him along the way or that he would have the chance of killing her herself by the “indiscreet eyes of Alexandria.” Maggie, pointing a gun at her head, says she barely has enough of the woman who existed before Glenn died to keep from pulling the trigger as much as she wants.
It’s a tense and pretty good scene, but it doesn’t tell us anything new about either of the two characters. Maggie still hates Negan, who we know from the moment she was part of the show again. Really, the scene exists primarily to set up the end of the episode, where the group must get on a subway car to escape a horde of zombies. Negan’s second to last, Maggie’s last, but she is caught by a walker and can’t get up. They deny the look as he fights, then turn around and leave. Apparently. I guess this is just a cheap cliffhanger, who wants us to believe that Negan has abandoned Maggie, just so that next week’s episode starts with him getting a rope or a weapon, something to save her. He would certainly adjust to his character arc over the last few seasons to make the rescue despite his hatred for him. But this is so The walking Dead, so we can never rule out the possibility that characters who appear to have a moral compass may return to misanthropic and sociopathic murderers at any time. (Looking at you, Gabriel.) Whatever the case, it will be annoying.
Luckily, the YEEP team (i.e. Yumiko, Eugene, Ezekiel and Princess), sorry, constantly writing the four names is an attraction) has a more fun absurd adventure once they get to the Commonwealth. Remember how delighted I was when one of the Commonwealth soldiers said capturing YEEP meant I had to do paperwork? Man, that was just the tip of the bureaucratic iceberg. Each of our heroes is “audited” by two lawyers, completely monotonous and emotionless in business suits who ask them a series of exponentially bizarre questions, apparently so that they can move on to the Commonwealth itself. Those that fail are subjected to generically dystopian “reprocessing”.
What’s great about this scene is that the quartet is rightly so. stunned when asked what university they went to. As Yumiko asks, how could it matter? It’s the zombie apocalypse, the university no longer exists. But the scene increases wonderfully with increasingly strange, useless, but vaguely threatening questions, such as: in what postal codes did you live? How many intestines are movements made daily? What do you use to clean? They seem to be asking for this nonsense to disorient them, Voight-Kampff-style, so they will answer the question that in reality matters: where is your settlement?
No one answers. When they return to their cell, Yumiko, Ezekiel and Princess are ready to leave, but Eugene asks them to stay, give the Commonwealth a chance, to trust their relationship with Stephanie (who goes tell Eug about the site by radio). . That’s when they ask a close jailed couple how long they’ve been “evaluated” and the answer is four to nine months. Then YEEP sees someone dragged from his cell, shouting because it is about to be “reprocessed.” Even Eugene knows them glasses to go at this time. Luckily, it turns out that the princess is Sherlock Holmes.
I’m not cheating here, andIt turns out he has an incredibly attentive and deductive mind. Sfinds out that two of the guards sleep together based on virtually non-existent body language and how they time their breaks. Yumiko, Eugene, and Ezekiel are stunned and take the opportunity somehow to grab the uniforms of the Commonwealth soldiers from the lovers off-screen and use them as a costume to hear the other two “prisoners” out of the area. of celebration. This brings them right in front of a wall of photographs: people loved by someone from the Commonwealth, hoping that the family or friends they lost during the zombie apocalypse will somehow, against all odds, be they would direct it. That’s when Yumiko suddenly sees a photograph of him, along with a note from his sister Tomi. And Yumiko realizes she can’t leave.
This is the most interesting development of “Acheron, Part I” and in the end tonight’s episode was a bit disappointing for the season premiere, especially for the show’s final season. Despite this, “Part II” will arrive next week, so it seems fair to reserve my judgment until then. Assuming we finally get to see the real Commonwealth and / or the remnants of the old Maggie Meridian settlement, there could be some important news that will really start season 11. However, if it’s just those dresses that ask people about their body functions over and over again, I would deny it too.
Various reflections:
- Make zombies nap? Historically on the show, we’ve seen zombies on the ground being inert until something catches their attention. But most people, when they die and transform, get up to look for something to eat, which continues until it is taken away or undone. So shouldn’t the soldiers have been doing the same? It really seems like tothere tuckered out and had a lie.
- Some good graffiti in the subway tunnel, my favorite: “If there’s a god you’ll have to apologize.” A quick online search says people are convinced that a Jewish prisoner dug it into the wall of their concentration camp during World War II, but I find no reliable evidence. I hope that’s not true because consciously comparing a fake zombie apocalypse to a very real atrocity makes me feel uncomfortable.
- There is a scene where we slowly see Ezekiel drinking a full glass of water after a coughing fit. It’s a little long.
- Yes, Commonwealth Trooper will be “Commontrooper” from now on. And I will May excuse my clumsy portmanteaus.
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