Bury Me Here – When a routine offering to The Saviours goes wrong for The Kingdom grave consequences will ensue but not how some expected. With growing suspicions that Daryl lied to her, Carol seeks out the truth about Alexandria.
This week’s episode was very much a Revenge of the Sith affair. As soon as the opening moments reveal this to be a Kingdom centric episode everyone watching immediately knows how it will end. This is The Kingdom’s final chapter before joining up against The Saviours just like Revenge of the Sith was the final joining point before from the prequel to original trilogy (at that point at least). Thankfully it takes a more Rogue One approach to its story by creating surprise and intrigue over just how things from A to B (rather than just overloading us with spectacle and a light sabre battle every 10 minutes). At many points Bury Me Here is a slow and sedate episode but for significant periods it’s incredibly tense as key factors become known in the colossal “Dick move” to provoke Ezekiel and The Kingdom into a fight. There’s genuine surprise and shock over exactly how things play out and the key events feel immensely significant. The episode doesn’t shy away from the fact that a certain Kingdom resident has felt like dead meat walking all season and still creates emotional connection despite that inevitability. We even see Saviours team leader stunned by everything that goes down. There is nice symbolism too over the events within The Kingdom itself. Ezekiel’s discussion about purging and re-growing The Royal Garden’s following an infestation is completely representative of fighting The Saviours. They may lose much for now but it must be done before everything they have slowly gets destroyed. We also get a clear wider theme regrets caused by inaction across many characters tying into the idea The Kingdom living to regret not fighting The Saviours; from Richard’s rather emotional back story about his family even echoing back to Morgan’s son dying because he couldn’t kill his walker wife.
There is a big problem with this episode though. While it did serve as a key plot tool for crucial moments, they went too overboard with the crazy Morgan revival. By all means show him impacted by the events but more than anything else the sudden snap of transition force choked the believability out of his character to make him feel over acting more than anything else. While this does make him an unpredictable element in future events the show isn’t exactly short of those right now. We already have Rosita and Sasha going rogue on a Negan assassination, Dwight waiting to strike within The Saviours and Gregory waiting to screw things up at Hilltop. What we didn’t have anywhere else is a character embodying ideas of peace against such actions of war. Even if just to be proven wrong Morgan’s pro-life stance voice within the wider argument and it’s a shame to lose it. Thankfully Morgan still has some great moments while keeping the crazy at least cage. His stern silence throughout an entire confrontation brilliantly unnerving; for the whole scene he feels like he could lash out at any moment.
In a big change up from last week the laughs are lighter moments are few and far between this week but the ever dependable Jerry still delivers a pastry based smile. It also served as a good transitional episode or Carol, getting her back in the fight and her little walker slaying moments are rather enjoyable. As for the big fight, the season finale has now been named, “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life”. That certainly sounds like a nod to change and an All Out War level conflict..... but let’s not forget the trolling of last season. They may well just line up both sides Gangs of New York style then leave that as the end of season cliff-hanger. For now though the season is still moving in the right direction ad definitely isn’t digging its own grave.