There Are Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead: Worth Review – Episode Discussion
So the 15th episode of the 8th season of The Walking Dead just aired and in this one we see the return of Negan to The Saviours, which might be a surprise for Simon and Dwight. Meanwhile, both Rosita and Daryl go on a quest to scope out Eugene and his bullet making efforts.
I’ll first go into what’s going on with Eugene. The character as we know is basically just focused on his own survival and he seems to be motivated mostly by that, rather than the survival of the ‘group’ that he happens to be in at the time. In this episode we see him working on the bullets for Negan and seems to be a little worried about his fate under Simon’s leadership as I think he doesn’t really know what direction Simon might take as he’s been away from most of the Saviours for some time now.
Eugene’s story in this episode plays into both Rosita’s and Daryl’s plot line, as both Rosita and Daryl kidnap Eugene and start leading him away from his factory. While Daryl is mostly quiet in this episode, there is some tension from him and quite a lot from Rosita towards Eugene. Eugene joining The Saviours and working for them all this time has hurt many in those from Rick’s group who see Eugene as a bit of a traitor and his decision to leave with Negan all those episodes ago was just the start of his betrayal. But things were made worse with his former group when Eugene was credited for the heroic escape route he thought up when Rick’s group had everyone boxed in with all those walkers during the mid-season finale.
We see things get quite tense between Eugene, especially from Rosita who talks down to him the whole walk back. So much so that I think this scares Eugene and after a short distraction is made by a bunch of Walkers that distract Daryl, Eugene vomits on Rosita and runs away. Strangely enough, he gets away by hiding in some ash on the ground. Now I don’t think Eugene is exactly a model character and in this episode I guess he comes across as a bit of a pig, even the treatment of his own workers in his factory is quite bad. But the attack from Daryl and Rosita seems to have riled him up and when he returns back to work, he even starts making bullets himself. Whether or not Negan is going to have good working bullets I don’t know, or if he’ll have enough bullets I just don’t know. But Eugene is a curious key to the war between Rick and Negan and what he does here as the main supplier could change its course.
On Negan’s side of the episode, this is where things were most interesting. We saw Negan return to The Saviours last week, although his return was kept secret. The episode sees us start with a conversation between Simon and Gregory. Gregory is basically begging for his life and we see quite a bit of determination from the character to stay alive. Simon does spare Gregory in the end, which is a strange moment of mercy from the character that’s been mostly savage throughout the show. But for some reason and it might have been Gregory’s speech, but Simon likes Gregory.
Negan’s return is slow, but he eventually reveals himself to Dwight first, then later in a meeting Simon and everyone sees Negan back. Negan first seems like he’s going to take care of Simon right away with Lucille and we learn a little from Negan’s speech about Simon’s past with Negan and how he helped him to take the place they currently lead. It’s revealed that Simon was particularly savage during this time in their past and this was a concern of Negan’s, but I guess he hasn’t had to worry about it until now, when it returned. It wasn’t entirely because of his mutiny attempt, but it had a lot to do with the slaughtering of the people at the dump. This meant that Simon was still the same person he always was and I guess Negan needed to take care of him.
But surprisingly, Negan actually spares Simon at first and lets him go free and things return as they are, he’s forgiven by Negan. But it’s not long before Simon resumes with his mutiny and tries to get Dwight in on it. Negan is a step ahead though and Dwight keeps him in the loop about the mutiny and it’s all over for Simon yet again. But even this was not the end of Simon it seems, Negan instead of just killing him, challenges him to a fight for leadership. A public brawl takes place and the two fight each other in one of the most brutal moments of the series, with Negan ending up as the winner. This means that Simon’s character is no more and he was ended in a humiliating type of way, in front of everyone in his group in a one on one fight.
I for one don’t know about Simon. I enjoyed him as a villain and am going to miss him in the show. I always thought that Steven Ogg as an actor did very well as the character and his performance was scary at times. I’d like to commend Steven Ogg on the great work with the character, I enjoyed all of his moments in the show. In recent episodes Simon became very interesting and his rise and eventual downfall as well as the bad things that he did to the people at the dump left us with quite a lot to discuss. I certainly will miss him in the show.
This episode had one final twist in it, in that Dwight who we’ve known as traitor of The Saviours for some time now gets discovered. We saw a few episodes ago that a woman had escaped during the time he was with Rick and his people and she was a witness to Dwight helping them out and even killing his own people. A thing in itself which is actually pretty bad to do. We know he wants to kill Negan, but all he mostly did in that moment was get a lot of his own people killed. The episode ends with the discovery of Dwight, although it seems Negan has a plan for the character in the future, what it will be though I just don’t know.
Overall this was a solid episode of the show. The most interesting developments were on the side of The Saviours and it seems that Negan has deviated away from his “saving” people ideas of the last few weeks and after the killing of Simon and finding out about Dwight and even after hearing Carl’s letter, it seems Negan is focused on killing everyone at The Hilltop and is back in villain mode again. That leaves me wondering what Rick’s going to get up to next week and if he is at all going to find a way to solve this crisis, the war and also save people in the process? Can’t wait to see next week’s episode, it’s sure to be another great one!
The Walking Dead airs express from the US on Mondays from at 1.30pm and 7:30pm on Showcase on Foxtel