Well, here we are again – another Walking Dead season finale, another ending where we have absolutely no idea where the episode is going to land. Does the grand climax of Dead City’s second season fall on the side of hyping up a third at the cost of everything we’ve seen before? Does it actually smartly tie off all of its plot threads to leave whatever comes next completely up in the air? Or do we actually get a finale that manages to do everything and pull off a balancing act that the franchise has always struggled to do even in its glory days?
Well, to ensure I’m not getting anyone’s hopes up I can reveal that the answer certainly isn’t the last one; but while the final bow of Dead City’s sophomore season might not deliver a tantalising set up for whatever comes next as Daryl Dixon’s did, but as our second trip to a ruined New York wraps up for another year, Dead City proves that it has just enough meat on its decaying bones to lope its ass into another season.
After faking her death by immolation with the use of an extra crispy Walker, the Dama proves that she’s a long way from being out of the fight when she gets the drop on Maggie who finally realises the true extent of the hold the woman has over her son, Hershel. After waking up from her bop on the head, Maggie is told exactly why the Dama is so obsessed with Hershel and its because she needs someone with vision who has no ties to the old world to create an entirely new one moving forward and after yet another conversation with her son concerning her constantly confusing and shifting attitudes to Negan, she finally agrees to go and kill him once and for all.
Meanwhile, Negan himself, after deciding that a return to the bad old days is just what the doctor ordered, has a face to face with Bruegel with the intent of a final double cross. Of course, Bruegel is hardly a paragon of honest virtue himself, but thanks to a handily hidden horde of Walkers that Negan’s got metaphorically hidden up his sleeve, a battle breaks out that will determine who the dominant force of Manhattan will ultimately be. As flame throwers belch their lethal loads, and Walkers try to bite down on any exposed areas of flesh that can sink their teeth into, Perlie and Brurgel are eventually overpowered with a particularly gruesome fate awaiting the later.
However, after Maggie makes her move and grievously wounds her long time nemesis, Negan is seemingly shaken out of his recent despotic phase after a tragedy occurs that he could have prevented if he hadn’t reverted back to his more brutal persona. But while Maggie, Negan and Perlie catch their breath and return to their senses, the sense of betrayal that Hershal feels is drowned out somewhat by the fact that New Babylon’s next invasion wave has finally hit the city.
The fact that this current iteration of The Walking Dead is so inconsistent it makes it virtually impossible to either write it off or hail it as a new golden age perversely seems to be one of the more interesting things about it. While The Ones Who Live held to an above average standard and Daryl Dixon started promising but got shit, Dead City started shit and then got somewhere close to promising – but before any of that starts to seem like an actual, discernable pattern, I’d also like to remind you that Dixon’s second season actually ended with a pretty enticing ending while Dead City’s ending is merely OK.
However, even though Maggie’s and Negan’s continuing adventures don’t exactly end on a pulse pounding cliff hanger or a massive change of place, it’s probably one of the more neater endings the franchise has had of late.
The big twist the episode ends with is that with all the Manhattan based gangs either dead or in disarray, New Babylon is free to just waltz in and enter the island with a minimal amount of fuss; but while most shows would make that a big finish, If History Was A Conflagration is more interested in bringing a multitude of long running arcs to something approaching a conclusion. Despite being the main character, there’s been a sense that Lauren Cohan’s Maggie has been stuck on autopilot as both she and the writers struggled to decide on what her feelings about Negan had actually become. Similarly, every conversation she’s had about it she’s had with her disgruntled son also ended in a frustrated stalemate, but now she finally seems to have chosen to let go of her animosity to Negan despite sticking a knife in his back. But while we finally have Maggie making a choice, we also shed light on what the whole Hershal/Dama thing was about and the concept that he could envision a whole new future for New York due to his lack of ties to the world before Walkers actually makes a certain amount of sense to forgive the shoe for pulling the old Texas switch on us when it came to the Dama’s demise.
However, it’s a shame that the whole season left both Maggie and Hershel relationship in something of a state of suspended animation just to wait until the last episode to actually move it along – but at least it was treated better than poor Ginny.
Ah yes, Ginny. Possibly one of the most underutilised characters in Walking Dead history finally shuffles off the show after succumbing to her wounds off screen so her new zombified look can shake Negan out of his returning villain phase. Even for The Walking Dead, it’s a callous end for a character the writers obviously had no clue what to do with – but the real shame here is if they’d actually bothered to put a modicum of effort into her, her death could have actually been one of the most devastating shocks in the show’s history and the missed opportunities are what keeps the episode from truly excelling.
However, one thing the episode does do right is how it handles the exit of Kim Coates’ Bruegel who proved to be the show’s best villain for absolutely ages. Slimy, smug and more tricky than that song by Run DMC, the duplicitous bastard remains utterly ruthless to the bitter end, trying his hardest to weasel his way to the top even when the writing is most decidedly on the wall. Even better yet, the silver tongued villain gets a truly hideous death worthy of his stature when Negan forcibly makes him huff methane before setting his fucking lungs alight from the inside; and while I’d much rather that he had survived over the Croat or the Dama, his short stint in Dead City was truly memorable.
So once again, Dead City ends with more of a shrug, than a bang; but it is worth noting that while this season certainly had its flaws (Perlie was slept on more this season than a narcoleptic’s pillow), it was still a noticeable step up than season 1. Where Dead City goes from here is anyone’s guess, but with Maggie, Negan and Perlie seemingly uniting to take on the invading forces of New Babylon and the Dama and Hershel watching from the wings, it’ll probably prove to be as chaotically uneven as the seasons that came before. But that’s New York for you, it’s always been a city of second (or even third) chances.
Lord knows The Walking Dead needs them…
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