‘The Walking Dead’ season 7, episode 4: Negan arrives in Alexandria
Last time on “The Walking Dead” we saw a whole episode about Daryl and how he’s doing while being held captive on Negan’s compound. He’s not an easy man to break down and while we did see him hold strong to pretty much everything he was being put through, there was a private moment where the pain was overwhelming for him. This was easily one of the best performances from Norman Reedus and over all this season, the material has pushed all of these actors to give us performances we haven’t seen out of them before.
Negan is coming to Alexandria and the group is trying to find enough stuff to give them when they show up, but they are all worried it won’t be enough and with Negan showing up early they are even more panicked. Negan on the other hand is really excited about Alexandria when he sees just how much is there for him to take, and he’s brought Daryl with him as insurance.
Rick tells Negan that he’s put aside half the supplies for him, but Negan wants to look in all the houses and take what he wishes. He makes Rick hold Lucille and show him around Alexandria and Rick does as he’s told. Negan does his best to antagonize him about Maggie, but they end up telling Negan that Maggie is dead (with the help of father Gabriel to really sell this story). And its a good thing too because Negan was looking to turn Maggie into his next wife.
When Negan starts to take all of their medicine instead of half, Carl stands up to them telling them to put it back, but after a reminder of what happened he stands down. This whole situation reminds Negan that this group has a lot of guns and he wants all of them. When a few of the guns are unaccounted for, the group is forced to search the whole town for them and eventually Rick finds them.
Michonne on the other hand has some ideas of her own and she leaves Alexandria while Negan is there with a sniper rifle she’s hidden in their fireplace. She’s using walkers as practice to try to get good with the gun, but it’s not working out that well. When Michonne returns, Rick asks her for the gun to give to Negan and she gives it up. While she doesn’t want to give into Negan, Rick explains how he doesn’t want to lose anyone else (he also revealed in this episode that he knows that Judith isn’t his daughter and confides in Michonne that she’s really Shane’s – mystery solved!). Eventually she says she will try to go along with what Negan says but when she sees that he took all of their mattresses just to burn them she is enraged.
We weren’t sure if Rick was going to find his moment to take out Negan with Lucielle and as much as we were rooting for it, we never saw that moment come. The real question is: Did Rick not take his shot because the moment wasn’t right, or because he’s too broken down? More then anything else we still aren’t sure why they aren’t just leaving since it’s a huge world out there and Negan only has control over a small area. We know that Negan has Daryl and that is a huge part of why they haven’t left, but there are still people in this group that want something better then this. Hopefully this means that there is a huge revenge plan coming Negan’s way, because so far this season has been incredibly depressing. Episode grade: B-
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