There Are Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead Still Gotta mean Something Review – Episode Discussion
So the 14th episode of The Walking Dead season 8 just went to air and this week we see both Morgan and Carol go out and search for young Henry who had become lost after Simon’s attack. Rick also ventures outside of The Hilltop in search for the escaped prisoners and Negan wakes up as a prisoner of Jadis.
Two episodes ago, we saw things end on a bit of cliffhanger, with Negan ended up being captured by Jadis. But looking back at last week, we didn’t see any of this addressed as things in that episode were more focused on Simon’s attack on The Hilltop. This week we see quite a bit happen between both Jadis and Negan. Negan at first is a prisoner and is left in the dark and tied up, much like Rick has been in the past. Jadis keeps him tied down and brings a tied up Walker near him. Interestingly Negan doesn’t seem at all phased by any of Jadis’ games and apologises repeatedly for what Simon did to her people. Although Negan is the villain of the show, I can’t help but feel sorry for him in this position. It really wasn’t his fault.
Somehow Negan is able to get some leverage and ends up with a bunch of photo’s under a flare he’s holding. This forces Jadis to submit and put the flare out and a helicopter flies by and then leave as it didn’t see the flare in the dump. I thought that the way that Negan somehow just had all these photo’s as leverage when he was tied up the way he was to be a little unbelievable.
I still think at this point that something is going on with Jadis, this helicopter and a new group out there somewhere. There’s more to Jadis that we don’t know about and maybe something will be revealed soon as a complication heading into season 9, but for now I don’t know what it is. It’s also not clear to me at the moment if Jadis is at all connected to Georgie and her people that we saw a few episodes ago.
Morgan, Carol and Rick are all out in the woods this episode, but not all for the same reasons. Morgan and Carol look for Henry and Rick looks for the prisoners. At this point in the show, I find Morgan to be one of the most annoying characters to follow and at the moment his mind is not in the right place and he’s not at all stable. The character is a little messed up and has been around for a long time in the show, but there are many gaps and disappearances from him and also he’s sort of like a cartoon character with his use of that stick all the time. The worse thing for me at this time is that I know he’s going to pop up in Fear The Walking Dead season 4 and that show was in such a great spot at the end of season 3, I do hope Morgan doesn’t mess it all up or isn’t such a nut when he goes over there.
Morgan and Carol get into a bit of an argument about where Henry might be and Carol suggests he’s down in the direction where the Walker they came across on the road came from and Henry’s stick is a clue of that. But Morgan wants to continue in the other direction. I think this is because Morgan is more interested in the escaped prisoners and is out there to get them. Morgan and Carol break away from each other and Morgan meets up with Rick who has the same objective, finding the prisoners.
The situation with the prisoners is one of the more interesting parts of this episode. Before Rick leaves, one of the ex-prisoners that stayed tells Rick to see if he can save them and bring them all back. “They all just made the wrong decision” says the prisoner and Rick seems to listen. But as we see in this episode, both Rick and Morgan have no intention of it. The two end up getting captured by the prisoners and when a group of walkers interferes with their conversations, the prisoners and Rick/Morgan work together to take them down. An escaped prisoner even saves Rick at one point, which would usually mean that the two groups would come together. But not this time it seems. Rick and Morgan go ahead kill them all, bringing none back to The Hilltop, no escaped prisoner saved! It’s insane really that the show’s hero at this point isn’t trying to save anyone at all, I had also not noticed a few episodes ago that Rick hadn’t read Carl’s letter yet. I do wonder if now that he has if he’s going to change at all. It’s almost as if at this point, Negan, the show’s villain is the only person trying to save anyone at all! Morgan justifies his actions with the prisoners in this episode at the end by telling Henry he did it because he was looking to kill the man that killed Henry’s brother, but at this point, how does Rick justify what he’s doing? Even more so, I wonder if this is what the title of the episode “Still Gotta Mean Something” is in relation to?
I’m interested to see in future episodes where Rick’s character is heading and what developments will come about regarding that character. At the moment he’s in pretty bad place and killed a bunch of escaped prisoners who really didn’t know what they were doing. They could have been saved and I guess as Negan says, they could have been a good resource. I’m also very curious about where Negan is headed at the moment. He’s returned to his group of Saviours and now has the problem of dealing with Simon, but also with Rick’s constant attacks. I’m very interested to see how Negan is going to cope with this all, especially since he’s got so many reduced resources and it looks like Rosita and Daryl who haven’t seen much of for a while are about to attack Negan’s gun making shop, which Eugene is in charge of. It’s certainly an interesting few weeks ahead!
The Walking Dead airs express from the US on Mondays from at 1.30pm and 7:30pm on Showcase on Foxtel