THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Season 2, Episode 7, NOVI DAN, NOVI POČETAK

Written By:

Rich Cross

THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Season 2, Episode 7, NOVI DAN, NOVI POČETAK

The tempo of the series picks up again in the penultimate episode of Season Two, with more high-stakes set-pieces and unusual moments of jeopardy. There’s also a surprise return for a character long thought to have perished, and some unexpectedly entertaining interaction between The Croat and Maggie which teases at the potential for a new alliance.

The previous episode concluded with Ginny collapsing after she fumbled her attempt to assassinate Negan for killing her father. Negan, who’s now in the throes of an existential crisis of his own about his true nature, heads off to the abandoned Bellevue Hospital on a dangerous mission in search of antibiotics that might save Ginny from succumbing to infection.

Negan’s journey through a children’s ward of walkers makes for a harrowing visual, even if the idea it introduces – that of the wholly dormant undead – is surely a stretch to the long-established Walking Dead canon. His visit also involves an incident which leads Negan to hallucinate, imagining an emotional reunion with his wife Annie. Dream sequences and subconscious visions are always divisive dramatic conceits, and this one feels particularly ill-fitting since Negan turned down the opportunity for a real-life homecoming with his family in Bridge Partners Are Hard to Come By These Days.

Too much of Maggie’s storyline this season has focused on her attempt to keep an uncooperative Hershel safe, even as her son has taken against her to align himself with The Dama. Once again, she’s off on his trail, but this time with a new ally. Since The Dama’s apparent demise, and after being ousted from the Burazi by Negan, a despondent Croat has felt homeless and disaffected.

The conversations between him and Maggie as they make unexpected common cause allow Željko Ivanek to delve deeper into the complexities of his character. Ivanek has excelled in the role of The Croat from the outset, but until the departure of The Dama, he had been restricted to the role of her lieutenant and the Burazi’s enforcer. Flawed and contradictory characters are always more interesting to watch than one-dimensional ones, and Ivanek makes great play of unearthing the previously hidden, and more human, layers of The Croat’s nature.

After the pair navigate the booby-traps in a high-rise block, they come to a glass bridge connecting two towers. An exhausted Maggie is gripped by a surge of acrophobia, and freezes partway across – just as the weight of pursuing walkers begins to crack the glass. It’s the kind of thrilling high-stakes action sequence that there have been too few of this season, and director Michael Satrazemis executes it with a flourish. Importantly for the plot, the incident leaves Maggie in The Croat’s debt. Despite this, she’s still reluctant to trust him, convinced he’s using her for his own ends, so the pair agree to separate and she goes on alone.

When a signal draws Maggie to the New York Times building, her reunion with Hershel does not go as she expects (although it does go exactly as many Dead City fans could have predicted), and ends with Maggie reeling from the emotional – as well as the physical – blow. Negan’s sense of responsibility for Ginny also drops him in to a place that heightens his own vulnerability to attack. But Negan has found renewed clarity and purpose in his responsibility for others and has rekindled his ‘no mercy’ fighting ethos.

Although the bombastic Bruegel is absent from the proceedings of Novi Dan, Novi Početak (Croatian for ‘New day, new beginning’), it looks like he and Negan won’t be the only ones staking their claim to Manhattan in the season finale. It looks like things are going to get messy – although hopefully not in all senses of the word.