The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 3
The Walking Dead‘s war storyline isn’t working. While I liked “Monsters” just a tad more than last week’s boring “The Damned,” the episode still falls into many of the same traps. What is this episode saying that we haven’t heard before on this show? Watching Morgan lose his shit isn’t anything new. In fact, the lengths to which the writers have gone to make this dude relapse are pretty ridiculous. It’s hard to believe that, after Morgan endured the death of his son and then found peace, the character would relapse so hard over the death of Benjamin. This week, Morgan decides to go rogue, execute some Savior prisoners, and then fight Jesus in the woods. Their fight, by the way, is so silly that it might as well have been part of the Robot Chicken special from a few weeks back. Seriously, didn’t it seem like Tom Payne was playing the scene like it was supposed to be funny? It’s just bad. And to top it all off, none of the other good guys do anything about Morgan attacking one of his own. Tara, Jesus, and the rest just let him march off into the woods. What is even happening? Meanwhile, Rick has a conversation with Morales, who shows up for a few minutes to remind the audience that the postapocalypse changes people. Morales draws many of the same tired comparisons we’ve heard about Rick for years – that he’s just as bad as the bad guy, that he’s done terrible things in order to survive. Mostly, their short talk serves to flesh out what happened to this secondary character after he left with his family for Alabama. They never made it. Ultimately, Morales’ return is about as important as the character himself, which is to say not at all vital to the story. I’m pretty bewildered by the choice to bring Morales back this season, especially since his whereabouts weren’t some kind of big mystery. I think most fans were probably okay with the conclusion that he either made it or didn’t make it to Birmingham. That seemed to be enough. The Ezekiel and Carol portion of the episode presents the war with a completely different tone. The Kingdom soldiers almost look like they’re having fun, and it has everything to do with how annoyingly jovial Ezekiel is about going to battle. His speeches this week are absolutely grating. Every episode, this character seems like more of a cartoon character. If the tiger and the Shakespearean delivery didn’t do it in the first place, these last two episodes definitely have. And Ezekiel has Carol smiling along with him. Why haven’t the writers given Carol anything interesting to do since season six? Last year, she spent most of her time in a house away from all of the other characters, and season eight has treated her as more of a sidekick to Ezekiel. It’s a tremendous waste of the show’s best character. The end of the episode sees Ezekiel’s squad get ambushed by the Saviors. Shots from the missing M2 Browning machine guns ring out and blast many of the Kingdom’s soldiers as they scatter. The sudden cut to black teases that Ezekiel might’ve been hit, but it seems clear to me that one of his soldiers took the bullets for him. Either way, I hope to see a very different Ezekiel next week, one who’s ready to take things a bit more seriously. Speaking of not taking things seriously, Xander Berkeley was hilarious this week as Gregory. The former Hilltop leader’s return to his settlement was the best scene of the night – perhaps because it was the only section of “Monsters” that wasn’t trying to show the scars of war on the characters. Gregory is simply a coward who can’t survive on his own. While the scene did seem a little out of place with the rest of the proceedings and I was surprised Maggie let him back into the Hilltop, the few minutes featuring Gregory were a nice breather. I complained last week that the show’s lack of stakes was really cheapening the all out war storyline. Since the main (and most of the supporting) characters have obvious plot armor to protect them, why should we care about these battles? No one we care about is going to die, so there’s no point in worrying about whatever is going on in episode three of the season. We know the beats by now: the big deaths come during the premieres and finales. Whether you cared about Eric, who was played by Jordan Woods-Robinson, is beyond the point. His death at least shows that not EVERYONE is safe this season. It’s unfortunate that it had to be one of the only gay characters on the show, but hopefully this also means that we’ll get some interesting stories out of Aaron, as he copes with the death of his husband. John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek US. Find more of his work on his website. Or just follow him on Twitter.
