This week’s episode of The Walking Dead continued the trend on focussing on individual characters rather then a large group. Clearly this is a choice made out of filming restrictions because of the pandemic. You almost have to wonder if the fictional world of The Walking Dead had such changes to their TV shows before their outbreak filled the world with zombies.
Princess is the focus of this week’s show and after showing her get captured at the top of the show, we then spend a lengthy time with her inside some kind of containment like a barn or a shed where she is kept captive. She whispers through gaps to Yumiko at the start of the episode and there was the genuine concern that this may be what the entire episode was.
Fortunately we did get a little more of other characters and the outside world, but this is a largely Walker-less episode. The bigger threat here are some guys who are guarding the heroes who appear to be dressed in knock off storm trooper cosplay.
By the morning Princess finds a way out and meets Eugene who is having similar bad luck locked up and warns her to go back in her cell. We see that she’s questioned and there’s an air of mystery of who the captors are. I’d argue that the episode could have done more to clarify who these guys are quicker as by the time we start to get answers we can’t really trust the questions any more.
Ezekiel shows up and is instantly acting overly aggressive and out of character and it only takes a minute before we learn that his ultra violence is actually just in Princess’s mind. A kind of coping mechanism, which works in as much as from an audience perspective we could believe Ezekiel has shown up to save the day, but you do have to wonder why Princess would imagine characters she’s only recently met as her potential saviours.
To play Devil’s advocate here, the fact she imagines people she hasn’t had the chance to really get to know yet is perhaps a sign of how alone she has been throughout all this.
Princess is an interesting character who has always been full of her quirks and on the border edge of sanity, and this episode with her hallucinations makes sense for who she is. Alone for much of time since the zombie outbreak before she met the other characters in the serious she is riddled with PTSD.
She beats one of her captors almost to death, but returns to him and surrenders her newly acquired firearm in a sign of trust that most watching must have felt would turn bad. The twist at the end is that when the wooden cell is opened all her companions are hooded for what looks to be an imminent execution.
And it’s here where the credits roll and this was really surprising as it was a super short episode at just 38 minutes. Hopefully we’ll get a follow up of this cliff hanger next week, but if the pattern of the last few weeks continues it may be a while to see how this concluded.
This episode is titled ‘Splinter’ and refers to a splinter which Princess struggles to remove from her finger throughout the story. Eventually it comes away whilst unhand-cuffing her captor and I’m sure there is some deeper layer of meaning and significance to the splinter but it certainly does feel a weaker idea to use as a theme in an episode in this way.
Conclusion
This was a short episode of The Walking Dead, which doesn’t have the same level of character based storytelling as the previous two episodes, but potentially plays a bigger part in telling the ongoing story. If only for its intro showing Princess and the others captured and for the ending. Everything in between was inoffensive but ultimately forgettable.
For more review of The Walking Dead check out The Movies and Tv Section of the site. And don’t forget to check out our new Geek Battle comedy panel show each week on the Extreme Improv YouTube channel.
