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The Walking Dead: Dead City Recap: Meatpacking

Season 1 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Peter Kramer/AMC/B) 2022 AMC Film Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved. Now we’re cooking with methane! The penultimate episode of The Walking Dead: Dead City got the wheels back in motion and got a little avant-garde. Negan and Armstrong encountered an interesting art installation. Maggie experienced some psychedelic flashbacks and a walker unlike anything we’ve seen before in this universe. New characters were introduced. Old characters died. And I really don’t know how this season is going to end, which in its own way is exciting. It doesn’t look like it will be a classic “all-out war” finale, the likes of which we got used to seeing on The Walking Dead. For all I know, the finale could be one big conversation.

Picking up where the previous episode ended, Maggie, Tommaso, and Amaia are joined by Ginny underground. They’re hidden from sight but exposed to large quantities of methane. At first, I was frustrated by how dark the sewers were. The last thing any TWD show needs is more scenes you can barely see. But the blue and red light provided by the flashlights and headlights ended up being pretty cool, visually. Team Sewer stumbles on a pile of fat (gross), and Ginny tries to make a break for it. Maggie vents some frustration at her. It’s a little harsh, but we still don’t know this girl’s deal. Maggie asks if she’s trying to find Negan and advises her against trusting him. That’s putting it lightly. “You do not know the monster that I know,” she says. “But if you stick around long enough, you will.” Freaking finally!

Tommaso appears to stumble upon two oxygen tanks that the four of them can share between them. But he’s clearly lying. Maggie sees through his bad performance almost immediately. Amaia is still upset about the plan going awry and starts wondering who told the Burazi they were coming. Tommaso steals my theory that it was Luther, but Maggie cuts him off, identifying him as the mole. Amaia is rightfully furious. Tommaso says that their dream of taking back the island is a fantasy. It’s very dramatic, and Maggie’s reaction to their fight is very interesting. I’m not really sure what she’s thinking. Maybe it’s been a while since she’s been around people that feel this level of despair. Because they’re so isolated and electricity is so hard (and so nasty) to come by, Manhattan is behind a lot of the country in the apocalypse. She offers Amaia a place in the community where she sent Ginny.

Then Maggie has a series of wild hallucinations, flashing between Glenn’s death and her son’s kidnapping. Why, why, oh why are you making me watch Steven Yeun get bashed in the head with a baseball bat, Dead City?? Haven’t I been through enough?? Tommaso makes sure she gets some oxygen and explains to Maggie that the Croat promised him a boat that he and his girlfriend could take to the mainland. Then they could find a community with houses, and farms, and real shelter. He wants to start a family so bad he betrays his whole community. I guess he didn’t think to just ask Maggie and Negan where they came from. But maybe the plan to deliver his people to the Croat was already in motion.

Out of nowhere, some walkers from the piles of bodies lining the sewers attack the group. Within minutes, both Amaia and Tommaso are dead.

Maggie and Ginny trudge on, and Maggie tries to make nice with the teen. She explains to her that she hasn’t told Negan that Ginny is in the city because she needs Negan to get Hershel back. They’re almost out when they’re attacked by a zombie that has multiple limbs and three, maybe four, heads. Is this evolution? Is this some sicko’s experiment? Maggie doesn’t have time to figure that out. In true final-girl fashion, she fights them off and makes it to the exit that Ginny escaped through moments before.

Only Ginny isn’t there. The transient teen has written “LIAR” on the wall in blood and taken off without her. As Ginny crawls through yet another set of tunnels, we see flashbacks to when she first snuck out at Maggie’s community. She discovered that the grain silo was full. The Croat didn’t take their supply like Maggie keeps claiming. We know he took her son, so I don’t really see the point of getting worked up over white lies and details, but kids can be sensitive about stuff like that. I’m kind of like … good for Maggie. Beat those Girl Scout allegations that Negan keeps throwing at you. So maybe that’s why Ginny chased after Negan — to warn him about Maggie. Curiouser and curiouser!

Speaking of Alice in Wonderland, Maggie too goes down the rabbit hole through the tunnel and remembers her recent past too. Once again, we see the moment Hershel got kidnapped, and we learn that the Croat handed Maggie one of the Wanted flyers with Negan’s face on it to her when he took her son. Has this been the deal all along?

What Maggie doesn’t know is that Negan is already on his way out of the city with Perlie Armstrong. At a souvenir shop, Negan insists that the marshal would have done the same if his wife had been attacked. Armstrong tells Negan that they’re going to Chelsea Piers with the intention of releasing a floating dock and crossing the river. I wish they were sailing away on Little Island.

They break into what looks like a public school and find some NBC’s Hannibal ass art installations made out of dolls and mannequins. Hated the vibe. It actually kind of looked like the thing that attacked Maggie. I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about. They don’t find the artist, but they do find plenty of walkers and plenty of things to fight about. Well, really, just the one thing. Armstrong’s not backing down on his plan to execute him in New Babylon. “You think you know me, is that it? Because I guarantee you you don’t,” Negan says, bordering on petulance. Their story ends as Negan finds a first-aid kit in a school bus and helps to patch up his wounds. Armstrong tells him a story about his brother’s drug addiction. Are they bonding? We’ll have to wait until the finale to find out.

Finally, let’s talk about what the Croat got up to. He puts a little beanie on his head, gets in a car, and drives to a theater. Not a bad way to spend a day in the city. I think it’s supposed to be a Broadway theater, given the marquis reading “KING FRANCIS” on the outside … but this is where Dead City’s New Jersey–for–New York filming strategy loses me a little. City blocks are city blocks, but I know what Broadway looks like. There are a lot of theaters up and down the Island Manhattan, to be fair, so it’s not the biggest thing in the world. Maybe, since there are columns on the outside, it’s supposed to be Lincoln Center. But even that feels like a stretch.

Inside, some hooligans plunk out “Anything Goes” on a rehearsal piano and sing off-key. Tragically, we don’t stay with them and learn their deal. I would simply love to know, but the Croat has places to be! He walks backstage and through a door with a star dressing-room sign into what seems like another building entirely. It’s the largest dressing room I’ve ever seen, complete with hanging lamps, stained-glass windows, and bookshelves. It looks more like the library from Beauty and the Beast. Sorry to disappoint: No Broadway dressing room that I’ve ever heard of is that big and that nice inside. Some fancy theater folk may hire interior decorators during their short stays, but there’s only so much you can do with those small spaces.

We learn that the Croat is working with, or more likely for, a woman called the Dama, played by Ozark’s Lisa Emery. She’s listening to opera and reading a history book on the European conquest of America, using a theater ticket as a bookmark. She speaks to him in vaguely dramaturgical terms about how a plot twist has left his hero offstage. How is it going to end, she wonders. I am also wondering this, Miss Dama! I have no idea how this is going to wrap up in just one episode. “The ending is all that matters,” she says. We’ll see! The Croat then says, of all things, ACAB. He informs the Dama about the marshal and how his people had brought the “old laws and prisons” back: “protect and serve,” but really “punish and steal.” The Dama seems to think that Negan will help them survive against the outside world.

I think this is a coincidence, but it is interesting that the Croat left the Sanctuary when they were at war with the Kingdom, a postapocalyptic community on The Walking Dead that was at the time run by a former community-theater actor named Ezekiel, only to end up serving a bona-fide thespian. The comparison that I think this show is trying to make with this character is with Negan. He told Maggie that his authoritarian demeanor was all an act.

At the end of the episode, Ginny sends up a flare that Negan and Maggie both see. Maggie may be annoyed at her, but she’s my ally for hopefully drawing them to a central location. Let’s reunite our main characters and finally figure out what the Croat has planned for them now, please! And, uhh, maybe check in on Hershel … the reason we’re here?

Bridges & Tunnels

• I fully forgot Negan used to be a gym teacher before the world ended. Kind of makes you think about how the most inconsequential people from your childhood could become tyrants if presented with real power.

• There isn’t a play or a musical called King Francis that I know of, but the Verdi opera Rigoletto and the Victor Hugo play Le roi s’amuse that the opera is based on are about a jester in the court of King Francis I of France. Maybe there was a modern take before the world ended. Maybe they’re trying to tell is the Croat is no king, just a jester.

• Does methane poisoning cause hallucinations? I do not think it does. We don’t need to call that some kind of factual error on behalf of the show. This is a supernatural world, after all. Maybe the zombie virus added a little spice to the methane.

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