The Walking Dead – Season 11, Episode 22: Faith

By Ben Wright (@iamzavagno | www.xgeeks.co.uk)

This review contains spoilers.

This week’s episode is split into multiple story arcs – the labour camp, Aaron’s group, Maggie’s group, and Eugene’s trial back inside the Commonwealth city. With three of the four within touching distance of each other, it was good to have the trial storyline to break up this heavily stacked character and multi-story episode.

Inside the labour camp, the group begin to formulate an escape plan the best they can, which also potentially involves Tyler, one of the worker revolutionists, who returns to the show in a cameo that made sense, given his incarceration after taking Max, hostage. Negan has a one-on-one with the Warden, which was an interesting exchange, but at least he got to see his wife as well as gather some intel on Guard 197 who isn’t best pleased with the Warden right now. The conflict between Negan and Ezekiel continues to grow, and while I do see the logic and reasoning behind Ezekiel’s words, I do have a blind spot for Negan – the man who killed one of my favourite characters – so I am a little biased here.

The setup that Negan is going to betray the group to the Warden is a huge misdirect, I didn’t buy it for one second and that turned out to be the case! Outside, Alexandria, the group decides to infiltrate from multiple fronts to try and snuff out the Commonwealth’s numbers advantage. We Negan taking the fall and on the firing line, the Warden makes a power move and puts Negan’s wife on the line with him. In a tremendous act of bravery, Ezekiel voluntarily joins them, as does the rest of the group. With Negan pleading to Guard 197 again, his words sink in and he refuses to fire, killing another guard in the process. With the Warden backtracking and with the hostage in hand, Daryl and Connie strike and the situation is resolved. With Herschel freed, the other kids are nowhere to be found. Rosita tries her best to get answers from the Warden, who refuses to give up the location – so Rosita feeds him to the Walker. The whole firing line scene was incredibly tense, and for a brief second, I genuinely thought they might kill off Negan here, and I would have been ready to riot! With everyone freed, it’s just the missing children that we need to track down – but with no clue as to their whereabouts, I’m not sure of the next move!

Armed with the knowledge of variants, Aaron’s group stumbles upon some very unlikely survivors… Luke and Jules! How long has it been since we’ve seen them? This was an extremely unexpected return, but a welcome one, as I always enjoyed Luke as a character. They inform Aaron that Oceanside is gone, completely under the boot of the Commonwealth and that they are being hunted. You can understand the emotional processes going through Aaron’s head right now. If this has happened at Oceanside, what about his daughter? What about his friends? With the Commonwealth troopers closing in, they use the tried and tested, albeit dangerous, method of Walker’s guts to blend in among the herd to make their escape. It’s worth pointing out that the herd contains at least one Variant Walker, as they picked up a dropped knife, so that is a story thread to keep an eye on.

Inside the Commonwealth, Eugene stands trial. Pamela puts on a daytime soap opera-worthy performance as she forces out her pathetic crocodile tears. It’s established very quickly that the judge is in Pamela’s pocket, but Yumiko is determined to sway the people, not the biased judge. A plan to use Mercer, initially, backfires – as they expected him to not know of Princess’s capture, but he does, so that avenue appeared dead. It was only after Eugene’s inspiring speech that the words seem to take hold of Mercer. Although I thought the Princess angle would have been a much bigger deciding factor, but hey, there you go! Eugene is, unsurprisingly, convicted and sentenced to public execution within the hour. As he is taken to his demise, Mercer stops his men and tells Eugene that it’s “time to f* sh up” – talk about a hyped ending!! I always knew Mercer would join the fight, although I did feel it would have been on the witness stand – I probably enjoy this angle even more!

I thought this was a really fun, tense, and entertaining episode of The Walking Dead. All of our characters were in play with everyone moving towards the same ending, so it feels like very soon all the sub-plots will combine into the final story thread that will close out the show. I thought there were some exceptional performances in this episode, with special mentions for Josh McDermitt (Eugene) and Lauren Cohan (Maggie). I am very excited and eager for next week’s episode and cannot wait to see what Mercer has planned for Pamela and her friends!

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