As we’ve traversed through a couple of these six episode, Walking Dead miniseries before, a noticable pattern arose that dictated that by time we got to the fifth episode, a shuffling of pieces was required in order to point our lead characters in the final direction they have to go. It may be a bit overly traditional during these times of prestige television, but it’s the quickest and easiest way to shift the entire course of your show in order to lay the groundwork for the finale.
While both Dead City (disappointing) and Daryl Dixon (great) both accomplished this in different ways, The Ones Who Live actually has the perfect catalyst to make this “transitional” episode feel a little more natural than just a bunch of writers straining to get all the events pointing in the same direction and shes been in plain sight all along.
It’s time for Jadis to finally face the music.
While a string of flashbacks reveal that once a year, Jadis (aka. Anne) visits Gabriel in order to vent some of her fears about her losing her humanity due to some of the unseemly work the CRM is doing to try and restabilise the world, we find that the present Jadis is still as mean, shrewd and tricky as she’s ever been as she deduces that Rick and Michonne never died in that fortuitous helicopter crash that finally released them from the tight clutches if military service.
After getting the drop on the loving couple after the pair has a run in with a trio of unsuccessful bandits, Jadis announces that she believes in what the CRM are doing so much, there was no way she’d leave their survival to chance.
While Michonne and Rick try to plea with her to let them go, they both know that even if they escape this pickle, to kill Jadis would mean disaster for their settlement of Alexandria as she’s stashed details of the colony somewhere so they’ll be discovered in the event of her death. Still, this is Rick and Michonne we’re talking about, and after the passionate debate has run its course, the lovers manage to escape and try and turn the tables on the woman who caused them to be apart for years.
Still, Jadis is a slippery as a nest of snakes dipped in KY jelly (now there’s an image) and not only has she enlisted those hapless bandits I mentioned earlier into providing a distraction, but a bunch of Walkers whose more vunerable spots have hardened like stone thanks to the local hot springs also stagger in to make our hero’s job way more complicated.
If Michonne and Rick can figure out a way to get Jadis to untangle themselves from the ever-present threat of the CRM, then they’ll finally be free and clear, but it seems their only way out will have to be through as Jadis’ insurance policy seems to be ironclad.
From Shane, through to the Govenor and beyond to the likes of Negan and Alpha, The Walking Dead has rarely had a villain that could get under your skin quite as much as Jadis. It’s not that she’s especially ruthless or brutal – she certainly didn’t behead a guy with a sword or bash in the brains of someone with a baseball bat – but the woman of a thousand haircuts (all of them awful) always was one of the show’s more infuriating roadblocks. Be it her time running the settlement known as the Junkyard while adopting an irritating form of broken speech, to her endless string of betrayals that always saw her somehow emerge unscathed, she has always been that rarity in modern franchises, a villain that it’s ok to genuinely dislike.
However, Jadis’ time of dodging her just deserts seems to be at an end as the whole episode of Become is set up to bring her long and sprawling story finally to and end. To be honest, I think the episode does a good job in achieving this, but I’m not actually that sure as a lot of the previous shit she pulled has either dulled in my memory (she first turned up way back in season 7 for crying out loud) or occured in a show I haven’t actually seen (she popped up in The Walking Dead: World Beyond, apparently), but I was so Las on her backstory, I couldn’t even remember if her sudden backstory with a cameoing Gabriel (good to see you back Seth Gilliam) actually was something that was already established or if it was a new wrinkle. However The Ones Who Live manages to wisely stick to the basics to keep things mercifully simple. All you need to know is that Jadis has been a double agent for the CRM fir a while and she’s the primary reason why Rick and Michonne lost so much time together.
Like all Walking Dead villains finally facing their Waterloo, Pollyanna McIntosh gets to play around with her character’s more humane leanings as her years of leverage finally runs dry, and while her showing a softer side isn’t as earth shattering as some of the more well known black hats, it gives her a slight tinge of redemption before it’s time to be put out of everyone’s misery.
While I have to say concocting a convoluted subplot out of thin air involving a ring that is found by Gabriel for Rick and Michonne’s marriage that gets handed to Jadis who then just happens to have it on her when the determined couple finally best her is probably one of the longest stretches the show has ever made, it does achieve a purpose. It puts Jafids in a position that she’s vunerable enough to plead with Rick and Michonne to leave the CRM while they make their well deserved getaway.
However, the entire show thus far has been banging on about the concept that, when together, the two lovers can accomplish anything, and so as Jadis succumbs to a well placed Walker bite in the neck, they let her know that they’ll never let the CRM get away with all the horrors they’ve perpetrated and after they’ve returned to their base and reclaimed the damning dossier she compiled that put Alexandria in danger, they’ll take the CRM apart one piece at a time.
And there you have it – by belatedly wrapping up Jadis’ story, we now have the course that The Ones Who Live will follow into its last episode and very likely beyond and while it may not stand as the series’ best episode, it’s still gripping and important enough to enhance and shift the balance of power in the Walking Dead universe without bloating it out even further.
A burst of action here, a new type of Walker there, a nice cameo and a major death means that the experiment to simplify The Walking Dead’s gargantuan canvas is going stronger than ever and all we need is a kick ass finale to make it a clean sweep.
Michonne and Rick can do it though – haven’t you heard, when they’re together, they can do anything.
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