There Are Some Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead – The King, The Widow & Rick Review – Discussion
So the sixth episode for the eighth season for The Walking Dead aired this week and it follows on after last week’s big Negan based episode. We now switch back to Rick and his group. Rick and his group continue on with the following of the main plot line for this season, which is their attack on Negan and The Saviours. Things are going well for Rick and his group, but it’s possible a few missteps could cost them everything they’ve worked for.
The start of the episode sees us with Rick who makes a speech about all the hard work he and his group have done and how they need to just push a little bit further to make it all worth it. We see a little bit of a preview for what the current situation is like at The Kingdom (it’s a disaster there) and a little of what’s going on with The Hilltop (Maggie’s in charge). But just before we see the show’s opening credits, we get to see what’s going on with Jadis and her group of garbage people. There’s some strange knocking, something’s wrong!
It some time before we get back to see what’s going on with Jadis. But when watching the episode we do learn that for some reason, Rick has gone to her to ask yet again for help. For some reason he’s willing to work with her again, even though she betrayed him, shot at him and worked against him and with Negan. I guess maybe Rick is light on numbers now, but really, he goes back to this woman? We watch Rick try to get a new deal and shows his photo’s of the Saviours being defeated, but he is rejected anyway. Later he’s put into the holding box and it was Rick that was banging on it at the start of this episode. Rick’s now captured and is hostage there. Will he get traded to Negan in return for something else? Will he get rescued by his own people? I have no idea, but it was silly to go to Jadis, she’s basically his enemy and is working with Negan. Rick’s opening speech at the beginning of the episode was one with a victory tone, was this really part of the plan?
Apart from Rick’s silly move, we do see a little from other characters as well this week. Carol is back at The Kingdom and as usual she is acting strong, even in light of what has just happened to her and the group she was with. Ezekiel is not so strong at the moment and is grieving just as much or maybe even more than the remaining members of his group. Ezekiel is struggling to find strength and it’s Carol who brings some of it back in him. I do wonder if this will lead to some positive development to the Ezekiel character, hopefully he becomes hardened after this episode.
Much of the episode does take place at The Hilltop which has a mini crisis at the moment due to all the captives that Jesus argues are unethical to kill. Although we know they’re all bad people because we hear them chat amongst themselves, there’s still the ethical question about it. Gregory who is a bit of a snake, tries to convince Maggie not to trust wolves with sheep, but that just ends up having him tossed in a makeshift prison with the rest of the group of captives (he did betray everyone after all, we saw it last week). I do wonder how Maggie will go with these captives and if she might have a crisis holding on to The Hilltop soon. Also will Gregory ever be able to redeem his character?
Some more of the episode has us focus in on Rosita and Michonne who decide they’ve had enough of taking it easy at Alexandria and decide to travel to where the action is together. They themselves get involved in the war rather easily as they encounter some of The Saviours trying to make a bunch of speakers play music so they can lure the walkers away from Negan’s compound, which will let him escape. These scenes are the biggest action scenes in the episode, with Rosita at one point blowing someone up with an RPG. Even so, somehow it looks like the villains will escape in the end, but Daryl from out of nowhere saves the day. It was good, but how in the world did he even get there to that place?
The episode spends some time with Carl and the new character Saddiq who Carl seems to want to help and bring into his group. I actually don’t find this storyline too interesting and feel that Saddiq’s dialogue is more suitable to someone Carl’s age. Saddiq is older than Carl, but he comes across to me as really stupid. Maybe other people like him, but I feel he’s wrongly cast or poorly written so far.
Overall this was an interesting episode. Rick seems to have made a mistake when he went to go see Jadis which will likely have massive consequences in the next episode. Everyone else seems to be following Rick’s plan and they’ve all gathered outside Negan’s compound together. With Maggie back at the Hilltop and Ezekiel in his Kingdom, I wonder what might happen next. I’m curious to see how the next episode plays out for Rick and his group, or maybe Negan will make a move. It should be an interesting one next week!
The Walking Dead airs at 1:30pm and 7:30pm on the FX channel on Foxtel every Monday