A hostage situation nearly ends badly, and The Kingdom takes a trip to the cinema.
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Staff Writer
The Walking Dead: “Bounty”
Season 9, Episode 11
Airdate: 2/24/2019
***SPOILERS INCOMING***
This week’s Walking Dead was yet another strong outing, even if Alexandria was once again left out of the action. We alternate between two very different situations: the hostage situation at the Hilltop and a ludicrous, but really fun road-trip with Carol, King Ezekiel and the Kingdom residents.
We’ll start with the Kingdom’s trip to the movies. “The Fair” is drawing near, and final preparations are underway. The King wants to show movies at The Fair, and needs a projector light-bulb to make it happen. Carol rightly thinks the whole thing is ridiculous, but in the end she comes around to it. It was really fun seeing Carol and Ezekiel together on a mission like this, and Melissa McBride and Khary Payton have fantastic chemistry with one another. It was also great to see Jerry again after such a long absence. There is never enough Jerry on this show.
The more serious situation is taking place at the Hilltop. Alpha and the Whisperers are holding Luke and Alden hostage, only promising to return them in exchange for her daughter, Lydia. The standoff lasts the majority of the hour, and nearly ends badly when Daryl discovers that the Whisperers have a baby with them. They then decide to abandon that baby when actual walkers descend on the scene, essentially leaving the baby on the ground as walker food. Lydia freaked out last week when she heard the sound of a baby crying, and now I think we know why.
Luckly, Connie is hiding out in the corn field adjacent to the Hilltop, and she manages to snatch the baby up and save it in time. The scene where she is running through the corn field, though, was very well-done, and I thought the decision to muffle the audio so that we could experience it the way that Connie does was a creative choice that paid off.
Alpha does end up getting her daughter back, after Enid finds Henry and Lydia hiding out, and the latter chooses to go back before Alpha kills the hostages. It was interesting to see Alpha show some sort of emotion towards her daughter, but it’s notable that she slaps her when Lydia calls her “mom.” I’m still not convinced that Alpha has the best intentions for Lydia long-term, but it’s clear that Alpha still cares about her daughter. Her role as leader for the Whisperers, though, clearly overrides the love of her daughter. That’s sick.
It appears that I misspoke a few episodes ago; Beta was not with Alpha at the end of “Adaptation.” He does make his first appearance in the next episode.
SCATTERED THOUGHTS:
– “It’s All Right Now” by Eddie Harris is a song I didn’t know I needed to hear, but it was the perfect choice for the Kingdom’s excursion.
– The flashback at the beginning of “Bounty” was only a tease of what’s to come. I’m not sure exactly when we’ll get answers about what caused the schism between the communities, but I would expect it in the next two or three episodes.
– Jerry has three kids. That’s adorable.
– Connie’s muffled hearing is seriously a much better artistic choice than Father Gabriel’s butthole vision from season 8.
– Henry is still the worst kid in the zombie apocalypse and I hope he gets eaten trying to find his worm-eating love interest.
