Betrayal has become one of the recurring themes of many Walking Dead story arcs, with characters breaking the bonds of loyalty usually justifying their actions as the unavoidable cost of pursuing a higher good.
Maggie’s trade of Negan’s freedom provided the sucker punch finale for Season One of Dead City. She shattered their short-lived and brittle alliance in the concrete (and walker-infested) jungle of Manhattan in the events of Doma Smo. Maggie escaped the island with the prize she had always intended to win from the moment she arrived: her son Hershel. It is the consequences of her act of treachery and the chasm that once again separates these two combative survivors that will provide the fireworks for Season Two.
Eli Jorné’s script for Power Equals Power wastes no time in setting this renewed antagonism in motion. There’s a lot of plot for the script to get through. And while there’s impressive energy and momentum in this no-nonsense reset, fitting all the u-turns into a single episode does make matters feel a little compressed.
To be fair to the showrunners, it’s not a straightforward pivot. They need to find a way to free the imprisoned Negan and give him a new platform from which he can start to threaten others, and, at the same time, they need to invent a compelling reason for Maggie to return to the island of the dead post haste. The premise of Dead City is a battle for power and resources, which unfolds in a single urban location. This means that all of the competing protagonists need to be making their way through the citadel’s streets, sewers and high-rises – and evading walker hordes – as soon as possible.
Back at her settlement, a relieved but far from relaxed Maggie finds it difficult to reconnect with her seemingly resentful Hershel, and to take on the surrogate mother role for the petulant Ginny – who’s even more argumentative now that she’s no longer mute. Throughout season one of Dead City, the ticking countdown of Maggie’s life-or-death mission and her fractious relationship with Negan, pushed her warrior traits to the fore. Back in relative safety, it’s the emotional pressures of post-apocalyptic motherhood that are preoccupying her. Lauren Cohan uses the shift in Maggie’s temperament to remind the viewer of the innate empathy and warmth that’s sometimes hidden beneath Maggie’s steely exterior.
Season Two promises greater prominence to the New Babylon Federation, shown here to be a ruthless militia, whose leaders tolerate no opposition and which demand settlements provide conscripts for their ranks. Arriving at Maggie’s homestead, their Governor Charlie Byrd reveals that the Federation’s forces are Manhattan-bound. She claims that the goal is to rekindle the fires of civilisation, industry and culture. But, in reality, their aim is to seize the island’s power-generating technology, based on the methane gas generated from countless corpses. In order to protect Hershel from conscription, Maggie is forced to sign up and is once again headed towards New York.
As the episode opens, Negan is languishing in lock-up and trying to build the kind of connection with his jailer he’s cleverly exploited during previous incarcerations. He finds his slow-burn escape plans interrupted when he’s summoned by the Croat for an audience with the Dama. The pair have an intriguing proposal for him, sweetened by the offer to re-acquaint him with a much-missed and now reincarnated (wooden) friend. Keenly aware of the militia’s reconnaissance mission, the Dama hopes to unite the gangs controlling the city’s separate fiefdoms into an alliance that might repel the coming attack. They recognise that he possesses both the charisma and the killer instinct necessary. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Negan’s fortunes are on the up. It’s a great twist, but Negan’s fast-track promotion does cast Maggie’s deal with the devil in a wholly different light.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan embraces the return of full-throttle ‘Negan unleashed’ with gusto. The scene in which he tries to win over the other gang leaders – in the guise of a grinning, evangelist preacher demanding the attention of his sceptical congregation – is the episode’s standout moment. Director Michael Satrazemis does not shy away from what’s a less-than-subtle homage to the opening of Walter Hill’s 1979 action thriller The Warriors (with Negan taking on the role of Cyrus, the leader of the Gramercy Riffs).
It’s clear that the returning Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) will play an important role in the unfolding conflict. But – although the pair do not meet in this opener – the show’s sophomore season is once again destined to be all about the unresolvable clash between Maggie and Negan, now back on different sides of the barricades. With its murky moral texture, its raggedly-drawn battle lines, and its impatient pacing, the weight of evidence here suggests that there’s still plenty of life in Dead City.
The second season of THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY premiered earlier this month on AMC and AMC+ in the US
