The Walking Dead – The Lucky Ones

By: Kelly Kearney

After Lance crushed Eugene’s hopes of romance by revealing his girlfriend Stephanie was nothing more than bait to lure him and his friends to Commonwealth, we get an idea about how this Deputy Governor Hornsby works. He will do anything to grow his community beyond its walls and rebuild the world, in his name, of course. People like Eugene are just pawns in his ultimate quest to become the architect of the new beginning, pulled from the blueprints of a world that ended a long time ago. While Eugene licks his wounds and tries to make sense of Max a/k/a the real Stephanie, Lance takes his prosperity show on the road and escorts Pamela Milton to the three new communities he’s trying to make pacts with: Alexandria, Oceanside and the newly rerisen Hilltop that is led by Maggie. With an offering to help make the communities they best they can be, it’s going to require a unanimous agreement or Milton says no dice. For Aaron and Alexandria, everything is riding on Maggie’s final say and she hasn’t exactly been exhibiting signs of trust and openness since her deadly run in with The Reapers. It’s going to take more than starvation and Daryl’s word to convince her to trust this new group.

Three Hour Tour

The episode begins with Pamela (Laila Robins), Lance (Josh Hamilton) and General Mercer (Michael James Shaw) taking a brigade of wagons, troops and supplies to Alexandria, Oceanside and the newly reformed Hilltop. The first stop is Alexandria; and under Aaron’s (Ross Marquand) leadership the community managed to clean thing up from their back-to-back wars with the Whisperers. The walker bodies that littered the streets have been replaced with rows of thriving crops, the windmill is back up and running and, minus a few broken windows, everything looks like Eugene’s (Josh McDermitt) crushed heart was worth the supplies it offered his friends.

Aaron, who knows Pamela is the key to Alexandria’s rebuild, partners with Lance to show the governor just how worthy they are of joining The Commonwealth’s “Mutual Protection Pact,” but Milton isn’t jumping at the chance to broker any deals with him just yet. The fact Alexandria has rebuilt itself from the ground up so many times is impressive but what’s not is that fact it’s fallen just as many. She isn’t sure if she needs them as much as they need her and business deals in this world, in every world, should be mutually beneficial. She just isn’t seeing what these people are bringing to the table besides the food and supplies she’s already providing. She is; however, impressed with Daryl’s (Norman Reedus) respect for a familiar face she spots in a photo at Alexandria. It’s a picture of her former acquaintance and Alexandria creator, Deena, who she saw from time to time in their political circles before the world ended. Daryl speaks of her with great reverence and places the successes of the community solely on her leadership. If that’s the case, then who is to blame for its failures?

With that, she and the wagons make their way to Oceanside, the second trek on this tri-community tour. Once there she is met by community leader Rachel (Avianna Mynheir), who tells the Governor that her offer is appealing but they already have a pact with Maggie at Hilltop and they intend to honor it. If Maggie is ok with this offer from Hornsby and Milton, then Oceanside will agree to it too, but not before Maggie gives them the greenlight. This news frustrates Lance, who sees these three new groups as his next expansion project, and Pamela can tell right away this isn’t about helping the people, but about helping himself to a nice legacy at her titles’ expense. She makes a few digs about his ego and knowing his role and how it will always be back up to her position and the tension between them is palpable. There’s a lot of history swirling around the two.

But all roads lead to Maggie (Lauren Cohan) now that she has the final say in whatever help Hilltop receives. When Pamela and Maggie do finally meet, it’s during a dramatic fight scene where she and a few friends take on a mini horde. She comes off as a competent fighter; brutal in her take downs but fighting side by side with her people and the look on Pamela’s face is nothing short of impressed–with maybe a dash of fear for good measure. Maggie hugs Daryl and Aaron hello, and then refuses their offer for a snack in-lieu of a questions about why they feel they can trust these people. Her answers come in the form of a hunting excursion where the groups pair off into twos, with Maggie and Pamela getting time to compare notes about what it means to be a leader in the post-apocalyptic world. They both try to get a read on one another when Pamela pitches the real reason for her visit: to bring Hilltop, along with Oceanside and Alexandria, into the Commonwealth fold. She says it will further her dreams of partnering with neighboring communities to explore trade agreements and inter-regional travel in hopes of collectively guiding the world towards a renewed age of technology. Maybe even one day kids like Hershel could grow up and attend a University? It’s a nice dream and Maggie gives it some thought after she watches Pamela shoot down a walker, proving she’s more than an old-world politician.

MAGGIE’S UNPOPULAR DECSION 

When the hunters return to Hilltop the differences between the fully stocked traveling caravan and Maggie’s dilapidated and starved community is painfully obvious. Their opulence is on display and even Mercer mentions why the optics of Daryl out of his storm trooper uniform matters when it comes to forming pacts like these. It almost seems like Hornsby and Milton are setting Maggie up for a Hilltop revolt if she refuses their help. The three communities are hungry and ravished by war and freak weather phenomenon. It’s been fight after fight for nothing but empty bellies and no guarantees for tomorrow. Years of that can break people and the bonds they’ve formed; it’s why longstanding leader Dianne (Kerry Cahill) decides to leave Hilltop for a new life at the Commonwealth. Maggie is stunned, but Dianne is tired and thinks now is the time they should be asking for help. She didn’t survive this long by not recognizing a good thing when she sees it. Her loyal archer friend leaving forces Maggie into a very unpopular decision that could have repercussions stretching beyond Hilltop. She agrees to let Commonwealth feed her people that day because starvation is enough to cause a riot, even in the tightest of families, but that’s where it ends. After witnessing how quickly Daryl fell in line with Mercer’s troops and how powerful their weaponry was at slicing down a group of approaching walkers, she chooses to decline their offer and no amount of heart to hearts with Lance can change that. She is a leader who fights alongside her people, as their equal, and she expects from them nothing more than she herself is willing to give. Pamela, on the other hand, is a textbook autocrat in a trickle up society. Her power is dependent on a class system where everyone acts as worker bees, keeping their Queen in honey and her fellow elites fed. Maggie just isn’t about that life. Whether or not this brand of politics exists in the new world or the old one, a controlling leader like her with an army at their disposal always ends in violence. In this world, an offer to help doesn’t come free and if Hilltop can’t or won’t for pay it, she could have another Reaper situation on her hands again. “Everything costs something,” she tells Hornsby, who for his part tries to convince Pamela to give him more time to get Maggie on board. Milton isn’t as invested in this idea as Lance is and we figure out why when she puts him on blast by accusing him of wanting to run these communities and usurp a bit of her power. She reminds him of her rule – it’s all three in the pact with Commonwealth or it’s none at all. Angry over her dismissal of him and his pleas to try again, Lance takes it out on some nearby walkers in the woods.  Firing his gun into the air he draws the monsters towards him and picks them off like target practice one by one. He looks crazed when Aaron interrupts to ask about Pamela’s final verdict and, shockingly (or maybe not so when it comes to the villains on this show of which Lance surely will be) lies and says she wants to make a deal with Alexandria. Together they will “rebuild the world,” he proclaims and then glares into the camera as he shoots a walker in the face with a smile.