Well, it looks like we’ll have to wait a few months to find out exactly who Negan killed with his bat, Lucille. I held out a grim sort of hope that we’d learn who gets killed, rather than have to wait until The Walking Dead returns for Season 7, but my hopes were dashed.
Maybe dashed isn’t the right metaphor for this occasion. Somebody, after all, met the receiving end of a barbwire-wrapped baseball bat. We didn’t see wh—we didn’t even see the murder. We just heard it happening.
Anyways, we know it wasn’t Carl. Negan orders his men to cut out Carl’s eye if anyone attempts to stop his beating. We also know it wasn’t Rick, since Negan ordered the eye in question to be fed to Rick should this take place.
I also suspect it wasn’t Glenn, since he was on the end, and it looked like Negan picked someone in the center, though I can’t be sure of that. My guess is that it wasn’t Glenn, but it still could be. Whatever the case, one of the group was killed tonight. And you can be damn well certain that millions of viewers will tune in for the Season 7 premiere to find out who that is.
We only have to wait a few months to find out. Hey, look at the bright side. At least this isn’t a George R. R. Martin book. Yup killing the main characters instantly not only one but multiple characters reaping fans hearts so deep.
Story number one follows Rick, Carl, Eugene, Abraham, Aaron, and Sasha as they try to get a sick Maggie from Alexandria to Hilltop. This is a trip they could have avoided had they not taken Denise, the settlement’s only doctor, out scavenging where she got a crossbow bolt through the eye.
Never take your only doctor out scavenging.
Of course, their mistakes began before Denise’s demise. Taking on Negan for Hilltop without ever establishing just how powerful and dangerous the man was constitutes the group’s biggest mistake of all time (probably.) That brief lapse in judgment—the group has never worked as mercenaries, and had little reason to begin now—has cost lives and more. It was stupid, and should invalidate Rick as leader completely. He’s made too many stupid mistakes, and stupidly they’ve all followed him from one to the next.
So the first story follows Rick and company trying to get Maggie to safety. At each turn, Negan’s people have the roads blocked. I assume they weren’t merely waiting for the Alexandrians to take a drive. They must have counted on them going out to search for Daryl, Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita who were captured last week.
It’s a bold plan, regardless, and Negan has dozens and dozens of goons to do his bidding, so they manage to block off all the roads to Hilltop, cutting off Rick’s RV at every turn.
This is where plausibility takes a bat to the skull. I can buy that Negan’s people go out and block off a couple roads, or at least set up and ambush to reel in and capture the Alexandrians.
What I cannot buy is that in the very short span of time between when Daryl and company are captured, and Rick and company hit the road (recall, Daryl was captured about the same time Rick headed back, which was about the same time Maggie had her complications) the Saviors were able to bring the captured survivors back to Negan, then send out armed groups to every possible road between Hilltop and Alexandria (which presumably the Saviors don’t even know have any relationship still) and even block one road off with a giant pile of downed trees.
It’s too fast. Dwight and company would have to travel to Negan, part way at least on foot. Then multiple groups of goons would have to be sent out. One group would be sent to a library (the one Morgan finds Carol at, in fact) to kill all its occupants and use one of them in the ambush of the Alexandrians first. Then very, very quickly go from this act of destruction and the ensuing chase to precisely the road that Rick and company will be travelling down.
Maybe I’m nitpicking here, but it’s such an elaborate, difficult plan to execute and Negan’s people execute it flawlessly. I mean, already this season we’ve seen our heroes get ambushed tons of times over. Now they’ve been ambushed in the most ludicrously unbelievable way possible.
Because, you see, it gets worse. Eugene has a bright idea. Why not dump the passengers and have them race to Hilltop on foot. Meanwhile, Eugene will drive around and make the Saviors think the whole group is together. They may tighten the noose on him—and there’s no doubt that for Eugene, it was probably a suicide mission either way—but they won’t know that Maggie is being transported on foot.
I was hoping for a plan of attack, with Rick and company on foot surprising a road block and breaking through, but this wasn’t a terrible plan either.
Except that obviously they weren’t planning on the Saviors also being in the exact right spot in the forest to surround them and drive them to where the rest of the enemy waited, and Negan, and Eugene, too who’d been captured apparently moments after he departed.
Yes, Negan and his people are so clever, they can be in the exact right spot in the woods in the middle of the night to ambush Rick and his people. All this in an area that’s pretty large. It must be, right? Since the Saviors never stumbled on Alexandria before, and the Alexandrians—in spite of their routine of sending out both scouts to find people and scavenging parties—had never before run into either the Saviors or the Hilltop survivors. Given all this data, we can surmise that this area is really big.
But Negan and his people were able to be in the exact right spot at the exact right time. Like magic.
Like so many plot twists and plot devices in this show pretty much boil down to magic.
Like how we got here in the first place. All the dumb mistakes. Not mistakes made because of hard choices. Mistakes made because our survivors weren’t thinking things through. How they’ve survived this long is beyond me. Why Negan doesn’t off each and every one of them is beyond me. He wants them to work for him? How could he possibly trust them to know?
Anyways, somebody dies at the end of Season 6. We just don’t know who, and won’t until next Fall.
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