Season 10, Episode 17 ‘Home Sweet Home’

We have entered something that is now safely defined as the last act of the walking Dead as we know it. Sunday night event, Home Sweet Home, the first of six bonus events placed between the end of Season 10 and the start of Season 11 24-episode.

That means we last night had 30 episodes left of AMC zombie drama. We’re now down to 29. It’s weird to even think of those as Season 10 since the deadline has already arrived and since Season 10’s main rivalry – Alpha, Beta and the Whisperers – are all on the fold.

But since this isn’t Season 11 too I think it makes sense to think of them as 10c, or Season 10 and three quarters. Whatever the case, the first one in this new series of bottles is pretty good.

Recorded, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and a handful of her new team join Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Kelly (Angel Theory) while Maggie goes out to the rest of the group get her back. Daryl and Kelly hold out the hope of finding Connie (Lauren Ridloff), Kelly ‘s missing sister. Maggie’s new friends, Elija (Okea Eme-Akwari), the man in the iron mask, and Cole (James Devoti) seem to be like strong men.

Maggie wants to take her people to Hilltop since they lost their town – but Daryl and Carol (Melissa McBride) show her the ruins of that city.

Carol admits to letting Negan go to kill Alpha. “We were losing everything. Negan is the reason we didn’t, ”she says. It’s not clear if Maggie is sure, but it’s not like they have many choices. Alexandria – and Negan – are the only options.

Maggie, through this little adventure, is very tired thanks to a very meet Negan briefly before all. Maggie and Judith walk away when he is suddenly there. “Hey Maggie,” he says. “I didn’t run away if that’s what you think. ”

She shines daggers at him and then walks angrily. “Well shit,” he says. Judith looks between the two, perhaps a little torn as she is close to the two – although Negan seems closer after the years Maggie has been missing.

The former leader of the Savior seems to have regretted what he had done before, and although he was able to get back to the good graces of the rest of the community – thanks in part for killing Alpha and in part for just being a better person than all – Maggie is probably missing a reason.

Negan killed Glenn. There is no return from that. Maggie watched as he smashed his head open with a basketball bat and his eyeballs came out grimly. And honestly, if you ask me, if they were expecting to release Negan all the time they probably shouldn’t have eliminated one of the most popular characters on the show. Coming back from killing Abraham it would have been possible in a way that is not just with Glenn, both because of Maggie and because he is still sad for an audience even though Negan is a very good man now.

Much of the program focuses on Maggie’s struggle with all of this. She tells Daryl about her and Glenn’s son, Hershel (Kien Michael Spiller) and how she tells him about the “bad guy” who killed his father. Hershel apparently asked if the bad guy got what he deserved – a strange question for such a young boy – and Maggie was upset because she couldn’t answer that in the affirmative.

There are some interesting encounters with zombies while the group clears out a place full of the dead to make camp, but for the most part the first half of the program is character driven and heavy on communication.

When they arrive at the outdoor center, they find him cremated with a pair of brittle, unrecognizable dead bodies. A new group of bad guys seems to be in charge. The Papers are the ones that destroyed the town of Maggie. They apparently came out of nowhere and sent rubbish into the town, forcing Maggie and her men to flee to find a safe new harbor.

Without wasting time, the group tries to find Hershel and the others. Daryl uses his tracking skills to keep the tracks from slipping. Daryl and Maggie go one way. Kelly, Cole and Elijah go the other way.

Daryl and Maggie soon come across three of Maggie’s people. The Papers, they are told, are out here “hunting us one after another.” Suddenly there is the sound of whistling and one of the survivors clings to his neck, blood spilling out as he barks to the ground. They scatter, running through the woods while being shot from the trees.

A woman screams and sees one of the other survivors of the stomach on the ground, blood everywhere. ‘It’s a trap,’ says Daryl. But the third and last survivor is not so clear. She runs to her friend’s side and shoots him quickly. All three survivors are dead in a two-minute flat.

Maggie and Daryl prove to be just one shooter, reloading between shots. Maggie, bow in hand, is on either side of him while Daryl hangs back. When Maggie finds the location of the hunt, no one is there. Just a sniper rifle – the kind that doesn’t look like you have to reload between shots – is set in the pages of its lonesome.

It’s a trap, of course. The sniper, all gill up, explodes from the trees as Maggie steps into a trap in a good position, and stabs her. Daryl jumps into the cradle and is hit nonsense by the big man. As he approaches him, he sees the hunter stripping off his boy’s suit and pulling his knife from a tree. He tears Maggie away while Daryl pushes up off the ground. Then suddenly the hunter is struck by a crossbow bolt. Kelly and the others come in.

Surrounded, the man – credited as just the Attacker (Mike Whinnet) drops his knife. Maggie asks why he did it, why they attacked him and killed her people for no reason.

“The Pope has marked you,” says the man in such a thick accent that it is almost impossible to say what he said. Pope, we can assume, is the leader of this new Reaper group. The Attacker reaches into his coat and pulls out. . . the pin from a grenade. Exactly these boys are not only murder bastards but suicide bomb fanatics as well.

“Get down!” Maggie screams and everyone hits the deck as the man explodes into a spray of blood and bones and gore. No one else was hurt. There is nothing but offal left of the secret attacker.

They go out and we meet Hershel for the first time, sitting in a tree. “Hey mom,” he said, smiling. This is probably the closest thing we’ve come to seeing Glenn in this show years ago, and it’s good to have a small part of it here again.

Maggie and Kelly have a conversation about sisters and then Maggie tells Daryl that they have to make for Alexandria. She will deal with Negan if she must – although it is not clear what that means.

They make it to Alexandria, where teams of survivors repair the walls and demolish buildings. The Whisperers apparently left them a “gift of separation” as they passed through. But it’s not on its torch like Hilltop. Kind of half-hearted on the part of the Whisperers if you ask me.

Negan sees Maggie and her men and her boy and looks at him, jaw clenched, perhaps very worried that things were looking out for him – now finally a free man – the man about finally on the ground he had hoped to see coming in. telling me that we won’t have a real conflict or resolution between these two until Season 11. (That’s pretty much based away from the narrative descriptions and this awful lot of pictures is nothing, so I could be wrong).

Everyone commented that this was a very strong premiere for the bonus events. Maggie had very few lines and didn’t do much in the end of Season 10, so it’s helpful to get a little more of her reserve stock. I’m not so happy with another bunch of laughs. I believe the show needs bad guys to keep things interesting, but it might be nice to have less bad guys to change. The purpose of the third season of The dead are afraid to walk as well – or one of the main reasons I should say – is the complexity of the competing groups. Not all bad guys were bad. The good people did terrible things to achieve their goals. No one’s hands were clean, but no one was a cartoon speaker like Alpha either.

However, a good start to the bonus events. the walking Dead continues to be much better than it was through Seasons 7 and 8. Daryl has real lines. The writing and cinematography and music and acting are so much better it’s like watching a completely different show.

Scattered Comments:

• Maggie and Judith have a brief exchange about Michonne’s absence. I still find Michonne taking off and just abandoning her two young children very absurd and out of character and the show is worse for him, but that doesn’t change now.
• Carol’s confession to Maggie was very strange. She opens by telling her that Negan was with the Whisperers that night, that he helped shoot the place. He persuades Maggie to tell him that it was Carol who let him go. It was less like an initial confession and more like Carol blaming Negan for Hilltop ‘s demise. Just weird writing.
• Kelly and Elijah’s interaction is sweet. Kelly goes deaf like her sister, and basically Eliah doesn’t speak, so he responds.

What do you think of “Home Sweet Home?”

Further reading:

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