There Are Some Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead – The Damned Review – Discussion
So the latest episode of The Walking Dead just aired and this one picks up shortly after the events of last week’s premiere episode. Rick and his group continue with their attack against Negan and his forces.
In this second episode for season 8, what we get is another action based episode. Which I think is actually a little different for the series, which usually doesn’t have its characters in action scenes for such a long time without some dialogue and down time for them.
Last week I had thought that this episode would likely bring with it some consequences to some of the characters due to the violent actions they’ve been undertaking and it seems in this episode, this is starting to occur. Although I did think the consequences would be from Negan’s side, it seems actually to be a conscience toll on many of the characters for what they’re doing.
Morgan is quite an active participant in the fight this week and actually does kill quite a few people in this episode. This is a massive contrast to where his character was in season 7 as back then he was all about preserving life. In this episode he’s completely lost that ideology and we see him struggle with it a little I think. Interestingly it is Jesus who seems to grow a conscience quicker than any character and recognises that killing people who have surrendered is a little wrong. I am actually quite glad the group did listen to him and not Tara about killing in these scenes, it would have made the show a little too dark if they went that way.
The episode did take the conscience theme a little further when we saw what Rick was up to. Remember, much of the characters like Morgan, Jesus and Tara are after all following Rick’s orders to leave no one alive. We see Rick here undertaking his attack on his own as he looks for weapons inside of Negan’s compound. Rick gets involved in a confrontation with a man he believes is hiding weapons and he does kill this man. When he goes in the room, he sees that actually there are no weapons there and it’s a baby’s room. He’s just killed someone’s father, someone just like himself. I think this act here will take a bit of toll on Rick and it’s going to stay on his conscience for some time.
Towards the end of the episode we see Rick get captured by a man called Morales, someone who we’ve seen before in the first season of the show. I’m not sure if this is part of the plot for the year or if it’s just something nice since the show has now passed 100 episodes and we’re looking back at season one. But this plot twist at the end here is quite interesting, I do wonder where it will go next week.
Overall this was a decent episode and it was packed full of action scenes. Even though there was little dialogue, the story did play quite a bit on the theme of having a conscience for what someone does when it comes to something as violent as we’re seeing. I would be interested in seeing where the show does go when it comes back next week. Also, what is Negan’s response going to be since he’s still alive somewhere?
