Warning: Full spoilers for The Walking Dead episode, “Look at the Flowers” follow…
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Some business up top here: For those who missed the news from this past week, The Walking Dead’s Season 10 finale has been postponed until later this year as the COVID-19 outbreak has prevented the post-production work from being completed. So Season 10, for now, will end with the fifteenth episode, “The Tower,” on Sunday, April 5.
Now, let’s dig into a “Look at the Flowers.”
With the nice trajectory this back half of Season 10 has displayed — the escape from the cave, the ramping up to the war and the elimination of Alpha (at a time that actually felt appropriate), and then the stellar Michonne exit episode — it was time for a come down. “Look at the Flowers” was about fallout more than anything else, as both Carol and Beta reeled from Alpha’s demise – each of them still communicating with her in their own way.
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Carol and Alpha
Carol’s arc this week wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as far as the character’s usual M.O. She took off, crumbling under her usual cocktail of grief and guilt. And along the way, Samantha Morton got to play Alpha one final time as Carol imagined her following her through the woods, heckling her with her own darkest fears. It wasn’t the greatest use of Carol, as we’ve seen her run through most of these beats before. In fact, we’ve seen many other characters hobble down this same road. It’s textbook Walking Dead. It’s why last week’s Michonne “multiverse” hallucination felt so fresh.
The turn at the end here involved Carol getting stuck under some rubble and having to fight for her life. The drive to save herself, and also be there for Daryl since he’s the only person she cares about who has yet to meet a grisly end (Sophia, Lizzie, Mika, and Henry were all mention by Alpha), infused her with a new appreciation of life. Enough to drive her back to Alexandria. Again though, most of this felt like recycled grief.
Beta the Country Star
While Carol was having her own personalized Alpha experience, in her head, Beta was spiraling. Carrying around Alpha’s head (which he forced a subordinate to stick his face near, with gruesome consequences), Beta seemed to be following her “commands.”
One meltdown later, Beta has now, apparently, reluctantly assumed the position of Alpha (meshing her own skin into his walker mask) and hit the road with a new pack of walkers – which he summoned by blasting one of his own country music hits!
Yes, it was hinted at even more this week that Beta, in his past life, was a famous country star named “Half Moon” (if we’re going by the spattered poster that sent him into a tizzy). I don’t know if we’ll get any more confirmation than this tantrum, mind you. The show might just leave it at this. But then again, if Beta fully clashes with Negan, Daryl, Aaron, or anyone else, there’s a good chance that they’ll now recognize him and the story will actually call it out officially.
Also, it’s kind of cool that with Alpha’s pale skin connected to his mask, he looks kind of like a half moon now.
Negan’s Deal
A flashback at the top of the episode showed us the moment when Carol freed Negan from his cell, with the expectation that he’d kill off Alpha quickly. Smartly though, Negan recommended that Carol not give up on trying to kill Alpha in case he failed, which explains why Carol, even with Negan out there on a mission, still kept trying to go after her nemesis.
Both she and Daryl did seem to have some unrealistic expectations about how quickly Negan would get the job done. Negan even called it out at one point after being criticized over and over for taking his sweet time. “What is it with you guys thinking I took too long?” he asked, after Daryl expressed his anger over Negan letting the herd overtake Hilltop. And you know what? Both sides have a point, kind of. Yeah, Negan’s secret assassination op wasn’t easy. And there’s no reason to expect he’d be able to do it fast and easy. Or that he’d be able to do it at all.
But then again, as revealed in the episode, during Negan and Daryl’s uneasy bonding, Negan did like being a part of Alpha’s crew. He enjoyed being out of the cell and being embraced by a new group. And, like a drug addict, Negan enjoyed wielding a bit of power again as he moved up through the ranks and got Alpha to trust him. He noticed this rather pointedly when a few straggling Whisperers bent the knee to him as the guy who killed Alpha. Negan could have used that opportunity to kill Daryl and head out with a new bumbling crew, but he saw himself being tempted by a darkness that he’d now like to leave behind.
Negan’s now in good (well, we’ll use “good” loosely) with Carol and Daryl. Aaron is the big cat who remains staunchly anti-Negan. Let’s see how he reacts to the news that Negan saved the day.
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Eugene’s Expedition (to the Commonwealth?)
In the non-Alpha story, Eugene finally took off for his meet and greet with Stephanie. Yumiko and (a very weak) Ezekiel are with him, heading into a big city on horseback, echoing the famous shot of Rick riding into Atlanta from Season 1. There wasn’t much to this trek, aside from poor Ezekiel realizing this will probably be his final bow one way or another (especially when you consider his emotional farewell with Jerry), until the trio reached the city and saw that someone had chained up walkers all around town in little play scenarios in order to make it look like there were people doing “people things” (eating, getting parking tickets, etc).
That person, in all her giddy glory, arrived at the end, with goggles, a gun, and dyed purple hair! With an “Oh, my God. Hi!,” this character immediately stood out from the usual brooding. Slight comic book spoilers here: This is Princess – aka Juanita Sanchez. Played by Paola Lazaro, Princess marks the TV show’s first big foray into the Commonwealth storyline. In the comics, she meets an expedition, led by Michonne, traveling to the Commonwealth.
Since Season 10 is now, technically, ending with next week’s episode, I’m curious to see how it acts as a default finale given this big character debut. Maybe the season was structured like Season 9 was where the penultimate episode felt like a finale while the actual finale was its own story (complete with a small time jump).
Source: IGN.com The Walking Dead Starts a Major Comic Book Storyline