The Walking Dead – Home Sweet Home

By: Kelly Kearney

After endless COVID-19 delays kept fans waiting for months for the conclusion of the Whisperer’s War. When AMC finally aired the finale, the news was announced that Season 10 was going to get six bonus episodes. 10C leaves off where our characters left off after the horde attack. With Hilltop destroyed and Alexandria under repairs, fans get their much-awaited return of Maggie and a peek into how the rest of the survivors are coping in the aftermath of Alpha’s reign.

Welcome home, Maggie and Hershel

The extended season opens on Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Judith (Cailey Fleming) in woods talking about old times while they tag-team kill walkers. The two come upon some of their people from Alexandria loading a wagon headed to Oceanside. That is when they hear a friendly Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) wishing the travelers well on their trip. Needless to say, Maggie is stunned. Staring at the man who viciously murdered her husband, Negan notices Maggie and starts to panic, telling her not to worry that he did not escape. If looks could kill, Negan would be six feet under as Maggie wordlessly storms off leaving Judith with concern on her face. Things with these two are not settled, and considering Maggie was not around for Negan’s redemption tour, it is doubtful they ever will be.

Next, we see Carol (Melissa McBride) updating Daryl (Norman Reedus) on Gabe (Seth Gilliam) and Rosita (Christian Serratos) and how they are leaving for Oceanside too. The plan is to divide the Hilltop/Kindommites between Alexandria and the beach camp. Maggie interrupts them with her people, Elijah (the masked samurai) and newcomer Cole (James Devoti) as the two men tell her that her son, Hershel (Kien Michael Spiller), and the others are safe at the rendezvous. Carol and Daryl watch this entire interaction between Maggie and the two men with both interest and wariness, but who can blame them? New people tend to bring with them trouble and it seems these guys are no different. Cole tells Maggie they are “safe, for now,” but safe from whom? More on that later. For now, Maggie explains she and Hershel were living with Cole and Elijah until their village was attacked. They showed up in the middle of the Whisperer’s War looking for a place to live, thinking they would be welcomed back Hilltop. Carol and Daryl break the news to Maggie and show her and her friends what is left of the former community. Bodies litter the fields outside the burnt down gates of Hilltop and beyond that, everything else is in ruins. There is nothing left of Maggie’s safe place; her home is gone. Shocked and confused, Carol decides now is the right time to tell her that Negan played a part in Hilltop’s demise. Again, Maggie is shocked. She cannot believe what she is seeing and hearing and she asks Carol if she was the one who let Negan out. Carol comes clean and admits she was because “Alpha needed to die and Negan was our best chance.” Maggie takes a moment to let it all sink in before she turns to Carol and tells her she understands. This moment between two old friends is important because Carol is owning up to her mistakes and ready to take whatever lashing Maggie might give her. Instead, Maggie seems to forgive her when she thanks Carol for her honesty. She really does understand. She knows what Carol has lost and how that pain can cloud anyone’s judgement. The two of them have grown so much since Hershel’s farm and this interaction proves how important those binding friendships still are. Daryl watches the two women closely, especially when Carol defends Negan by saying he was the reason they did not lose Alexandria. Cole interrupts them with his disappointment over the news their people will be crammed into an already crowded Alexandria with the guy who killed Maggie’s husband. Ouch! Talk about adding more pain to an already upsetting moment.  Daryl does not look amused by this guy and says, “We still haven’t figured things out yet.” Maggie thanks Carol once again for being honest and, along with Cole and Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari), leaves to go check on her son.

Once they are alone, Daryl turns to Carol and tells her she did not need to come clean with Maggie about letting Negan out. Carol disagrees with him and says, “I owe her that much.” The guilt over how this all went down hangs heavy on Carol’s mind. Her sullen demeanor says it all. She has a lot to make up for and not just to Maggie. Daryl decides to keep an eye on Maggie and make sure she gets to Hershel safely, but before he goes Carol tells him she is sure their old friend is not going to come around to living near a free Negan. Daryl asks Carol if she has come around to the former Savior and the look on her face says to him “I’m getting there.”

Still Searching for Connie

Back in the woods Kelly (Angel Theory) calls out to Daryl and they seem to have gotten closer since the tragedy at the cave. The two have not given up hope they will find Connie and they continue to look for her every chance they get. Daryl takes the lead and starts to track their way through the woods until they meet up with Maggie and the two newcomers near a group of shipping containers on a fenced in lot full of walkers. With night coming soon, they all decide to camp out on the containers until morning, but first they have to clear that lot of the dead. The five of them go into action and take down the hungry zombies one by one, locking the rest into a double stuffed zombie box.

As night falls, Maggie settles into her container and Daryl stops by for a chat. Maggie tells him about Georgie and the twins and how they left after they learned about a city out west. She has not heard from them since and as soon after Georgie left, the village they were in fell and everyone fled to parts unknown.  Daryl asks her why she did not just come home after the last place fell? She explains, they took a detour to her grandmother’s house at the beach. It was a place she and Glen always talked about visiting. She paints an image for Daryl when she tells him Hershel loved the waves. As the two smile and reminisce, we cannot help but be reminded of all the things they have gone through together. They are family in every sense of the word and to hear the son of Glen bouncing around in the waters his father never got the chance to swim in, is a good vision to have amongst all the other horrors they have witnessed. Eventually, the topic lands on Negan and how she told Hershel a bad man killed his daddy. He wanted to know if that bad man paid for what he did. Apparently not, at least not in the ways Maggie thinks he should have. She admits to Daryl the reason she left Hilltop in the first place was to get Negan out of her head, and now that she is back, she will have to figure out how to live alongside him. Daryl repeats his earlier statement about nothing being set in stone. Everything is still coming together since Alpha’s horde attacked. There has not been a final decision on what to do with Negan, and as Daryl starts to apologize for Carol, Maggie stops him. She does not blame Carol; she might have done the same if she was in their friend’s shoes. With that, Daryl leaves Maggie to rest. There will be more time to update each other once they find Hershel and get back to Alexandria.

The Reapers

The next morning everyone gets ready to leave until they notice Kelly left her watch post. When Maggie finds her on the lot’s perimeter, she has no idea the young woman is looking for signs from her sister Connie on top of a big rig truck. She reprimands Kelly for going off on her own without telling anyone but Daryl interrupts Maggie to explain the situation with Connie. Elijah overhears this and jumps into action to check the top of the truck for any signs of Kelly’s sister. According to Maggie, the masked fighter also lost his sister and so he understands what the worried woman is going through. It looks like Kelly just got herself a new friend.

When the group finally starts to make their way to the rendezvous for Hershel, Daryl spots a plume of smoke in the nearby distance. They all take off to check it out, but when they find the meeting point in ashes, two bodies burnt to a crisp, and no sign from Hershel, Cole says “they found us.” Who is they?

They, Maggie explains, are The Reapers, and they are the same people who sacked their village. Since then, this group of killers has been hunting Maggie and her friends ever since. According to Cole they are efficient killers, which makes finding Hershel and the other survivors all the more urgent. With that, Daryl flies into tracker mode as the group splits up to search for Maggie’s little boy. Kelly joins new buddy Elijah, and Cole, while Maggie sticks by Daryl’s side. After a few close calls and one brief but sweet moment between Kelly and a maskless and panicked Elijah, Maggie and Daryl come across two women who were with Hershel. Immediately, they let her know most of their friends scattered when the fire started but all should be alive. Before Maggie can even ask where they ran to, a bullet zips between the trees and takes both women out!  They are indeed being hunted and Daryl thinks the shooter is trying to draw them out by picking each of them off one by one. It is hunting season and the archer orders them all to run for cover.  After dodging bullets and hiding behind trees, the shooter gets his hands-on Maggie as she is ensnared in his trap and dangling above the ground from a rope. Daryl dives onto the scene to save her but The Reaper tosses him like a rag doll against a tree. That is when Kelly grabs Daryl’s dropped crossbow and fires off a bolt that lands in The Reaper’s chest. Maggie cuts herself free and demands to know who this man is, but in his final moments, The Reaper reaches into his jacket and pulls the pin on a grenade. Body parts and dirt go flying everywhere but nobody besides the hunter gets hurt. For now, the threat is over, literally all over in pieces, and it is not long before Maggie gets a sign from above from Hershel. An acorn hits her in the head thanks to her baseball hat wearing kid up in a tree. Hershel, that resourceful mini-Glen Rhee, is just hanging out on a branch waiting for his mom.

With Hershel safe but the night quickly approaching, Daryl and the others decide to head back to the shipping containers until morning. Once safely locked behind the metal doors, Maggie takes the time to get to know Kelly. They compare sister stories because Beth and Connie are never far from their minds. Cue Daryl, who interrupts them to tell Maggie he thinks they should stick around the area for a few days just to make sure there are no other Reapers lurking around. For now, they seem safe, but that could change unless they are sure the threat is gone. Before he retires to his own shipping container, Daryl asks Maggie if she has decided to stay. She looks down at her sleeping son and tells him she will figure out the Negan situation, but for now, they are home.

After a few days, the group makes their way back to Alexandria and are stunned by the damage they see. The walls surrounding the community are down, but everyone is chipping in to patch them up. Carol is the first person to welcome them back and explains that the destruction was a parting gift from the Whisperers. As the group heads inside to find a place to say, Negan spots Maggie and Hershel and his entire face changes from calm and smiling to contemplative and suspicious. If the widow is staying on at Alexandria, what does that mean for his freedom? He worked hard for his redemption and it could all go up in smoke the minute Maggie forces the community to choose between her and his life outside a jail cell.  It is going to be a tense six episodes if these two cannot figure out how to move on from the past and look forward to their future. A future that at least according to Carol, they would not have if it were not for Negan.