The Walking Dead: Dead City – Who’s There?

By starrymag | July 2, 2023

By: Dawn Inchaurregui Miller

 

 

Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) watch the gnarled fingers of the dead as the herd inside the factory try to reach toward them. The mysterious white haired woman from before has taken Maggie’s bag and escaped through a hole in the ceiling. Reluctantly the two of them begin to follow, which unfortunately means climbing up an elevator shaft, triggering a previously unseen anxiety for Maggie. Negan heads up first and she follows, albeit much slower and with awkward glances down. Eventually, they both reach the top just in time to see the old lady (Eleanor Reissa) use a zipline to travel from one building to the next, but are surprised when she turns and passes the handle back to them, beckoning for them to follow. Negan offers a courtesy “ladies first,” but Maggie is in no rush to be hanging from such a height, so he takes the handle himself and glides to the next building. When he passes it back up to Maggie it reaches her just in time for more walkers to be shuffling up the hallway steadily towards her. She barely has time to swallow down her fear, before dropping from the edge and beginning her descent. However without having taken a swing, she finds herself stopping a metre or so from the edge of the next building. An enormous herd can be seen on the ground far below her, though that would be the least of her problems should she fall. Negan leans forward to try and help her, but as ever she rejects his help and instead opts to awkwardly swing herself, reaching for the wall with her legs.

 

We previously learned that the location of the Hilltop community had moved, which is where we see Ginny’s (Mahina Napoleon) first day within the community. She is led through bustling people doing farm work before reaching the makeshift school that has over a dozen other children around the same age as her. They introduce her, knowing only her first name and go on to say she is from the Oceanside community, most likely in an attempt to prevent any prejudice she would experience due to Negan’s bad reputation within Hilltop’s history. She awkwardly takes a seat as others can be seen whispering about her in the background.

 

Back in Manhattan, Negan and Maggie enter through a window and follow along a hallway, still in pursuit of the old woman. They arrive in an empty open space where she is crouched, going through the contents of their bags. Maggie immediately “nuh uh’s” and grabs her belongings, but when she takes things from Negans he tells her it’s ok and she can keep what she took. However, in return she offers to trade for it with food – pigeon. Maggie grows impatient to keep moving, so Negan asks the lady if she can take them to the building, sending off smoke behind them. She emphatically gestures. Thus, through the language barrier it becomes very clear that the answer is no. Negan points out to Maggie that they can see where the road goes with her or head back through the various swarms of walkers. They are in agreement as they follow after her, Negan stuffing a chunk of pigeon into his mouth.

 

Back inside the factory the only marshal left, Perlie (Gaius Charles), sits with his back against the wall feeling his head where Maggie had bashed it. He turns and sees his gun on the floor where she had left it before quickly pulling himself back behind the wall that separates him from the walkers.

 

Maggie and Negan descend a staircase behind the old lady and enter into a room where several of her people are waiting with makeshift weapons and arguing over the newcomers. Maggie and Negan keep their hands in the air and quietly say to each other that these people are most likely not with The Croat. While the arguing continues Negan attempts to talk to the group and suggests that the old lady wouldn’t have helped them if a fight was intended. A member of the group named Tomasso (Jonathan Higginbotham) tells them they don’t need new friends as there are thousands of them that run the city, but another member, Amaia (Karina Ortiz), cuts him off and asks why they are there. She says it’s clear they aren’t local and Negan looks to Maggie to let her give an explanation, expecting her to tell the truth. Instead she lies, claiming they are on their way to a settlement in Canada and are only there for supplies. Amaia however instantly sees through this and calls “bull****.”

They are led through part of an old mall that has been converted into a base for the community and their bags thrown to a man for searching. They are then directed into a grotesque public bathroom where they are to be held and told not to get too comfortable, something they would be entirely unable to do either way.

 

Back with the Hilltop community, Nina (Pallavi Sastry) speaks comfortingly to Ginny who is still silent and doesn’t seem to feel very happy without Negan. Nina tells her the people in the community will probably feel like family to her soon and places a plate of food on the side for her before telling her she will be around should Ginny need anything. When she is left alone Ginny pulls Negan’s shirt up around her legs and wraps her arms around her knees.

The scene then changes to within the same location, but a different time. The light turns darker and we see Maggie sometime before the raid walking into that same room, where her son Hershel is sat drawing. She asks him why he wasn’t in weapons training again, but it seems evident he is in his rebellious teen stage and finds the constant training tedious. Maggie picks up one of his drawings and tells him it’s really good, but he snatches it back, screwing it up and casting it aside before making an excuse to leave the room. Maggie retrieves the drawing, unfolding it in her hands to look again.

 

Negan and Maggie, now making themselves entirely uncomfortable on the filthy floors of the public bathroom, discuss their captors. Negan points out that they had guns, however makeshift they are, and they would have ended up dead. However, Maggie thinks it would have been the other way round and they should have fought them. Negan tells her that they wouldn’t be stuck in there if she hadn’t lied in the first place, but she wasn’t going to tell them the real reason they were there. Negan says they could have given a little info and got some back, that it’s the way it works. Speaking of information, Maggie reminds him that it’s what he is there for and asks again about The Croat. She takes a seat in front of him as he begins to recount the story for her. Towards the beginning of the world falling apart The Croat had been through some of the worst things imaginable and Negan had taken him in. The Croat soon began calling him brother and told Negan he felt safe with him. When Maggie responds that it takes a monster to make a monster, Negan makes it clear that he was not the same at all. The Croat liked to read people, toying with them and pulling them apart, which could be useful when they needed a threat handled. However, he took it too far when he hurt a child. They had come across her travelling alone. Not seeing the young girl as a threat, Negan had given the order to let her go but The Croat took it upon himself to prove otherwise. She admitted to being a scout for the kingdom before he killed her, though whether that was due to being tortured is a possibility. Negan tries to hold back tears when repeating that she was just a child and that it was what made him realize The Croat had to be permanently stopped. Negan had taken a shot at him, but missed, hitting only his ear. This ufortunately gave him a chance to get away and was the last time he had seen or heard of him through all the years until now. After listening to his story Maggie realizes that The Croat is going to want to kill Negan, to which he agrees, leaving Maggie to bitterly ask why he didnt tell her that before. Negan, attempting to reassure or justify, tells her that he does know how The Croat operates and Maggie replies that of course he does.

 

The marshall, now alone, wanders throughout the city of Manhattan. At first he seems lost, but when he finds himself outside a door and pauses it becomes clear that he is familiar with whatever is behind it. After shoulder barging his way inside he walks the hallways towards a familiar flat and breaks inside. It is full of rotten food scraps, flies and drug paraphernalia. Scanning around the apartment he finds old pictures of himself next to someone that can be assumed is a brother and continues to look around until he finds a box that had once had a gun inside but it is now empty. It’s while he’s looking at pictures of his whole family that he notices the reflection of legs behind him. The floorboards creak beneath his feet as he makes his way into the room, where his brother, with arms slack at his, sits dead on the armchair having shot himself in the head. He covers the body of his brother with a sheet and lays the rosary beads that had fallen to the ground over the top. He picks up the gun he had been searching for that his brother had used just as walkers begin trying to make their way through the door. Opting for the window, he escapes down the fire escape only to end up swinging ten feet in the air having stepped into a booby trap.

 

Hearing worried noises outside in the hallway Maggie and Negan stand and move against the wall by the door. Tomasso opens it and pulls them out into the hallway, declaring that they led The Croats people there causing Negan to hold up his hands and try to calm the situation. He makes a point of how easy it would be to kill Tomasso if they were going to by holding up a sharpened bone to his throat. He lets him go; however, telling them that he and Maggie actually want to help. Amaia hands their bags and weapons over and calls for them all to leave. Down on the ground The Croat’s men enter wearing biker helmets and with considerably more weapons to hand. Negan and Maggie are a beat behind their new friends and almost run headlong into trouble until Amaia shouts for them to duck and uses one of their altered hand tools to fire at him, ripping a deep chunk of flesh from his chest. Ahead of them Luther (Michael Anthony) snaps the neck of another and they move to leave, but not before Maggie gets to bring her foot down on her would-be attacker crushing his chest. As they all make it to the roof, thinking they are in the clear, another one of the men appears from the side holding the old lady, Esther. They try to reason with him, but ultimately he stabs her in the stomach letting her fall to the floor as the others run to her aid and Negan takes the killer down himself. Esther dies, leaving Tomasso to put a spike through her brain. Since they have no time to wait, Amaia begins to lead him and the others away. Negan tells them to go so he can deal with the situation, but Maggie remains behind him as he drags The Croats man back the way they came.

Downstairs more of his men pile in through the doors, looking to follow the group, but Negan has other ideas. One by one he smashes the captured man’s heads through the windows above them, shouting “knock, knock.” Unsure who he is or how to respond, they take off their helmets and stand below as he channels the old Negan, throwing charismatic insults and telling a joke before slitting the man’s throat open from the balcony, covering them in his blood. He then guts him and continues spilling it from over the balcony. He emphatically warns them against following their group before throwing what’s left of their man over the edge, directly on top of them. When he turns he sees Maggie watching him, remembering the man he once was, even though what he did, bought them time.

 

At the Hilltop community Ginny is looking to leave and sneaks past a lone guard. She reaches a motorbike, but pauses when she sees the storage silo across the yard.

 

Negan pulls a large piece of glass out of his hand as the group all sit quietly together in the darkness. Amaia comforts Tomasso in his silent grief,  giving him a necklace that must have belonged to Esther. The silence is finally broken when Amaia thanks them for helping and Tomasso tells them that he was lying about their group having thousands of members. Amaia tells them that they would return the favour, give them supplies, but “someone” has already taken it and Tomasso follows up that the boat will have already been sunk by them. Maggie retorts, “You mean The Croat,” and tells them the real reason they came is because he took her son. Going after him is something they can help with, as long as they are willing to die trying.

 

Across the other side of the city a car pulls up and several men with helmets, alongside The Croat (Željko Ivanek), leave the headlights on and walk into the beams so they can kill the walkers. They are there for whoever is in the trap and upon dropping down the marshal, The Croat seems surprised at the badge on his belt and tells him he is safe now before having his men pick him up from the ground.