Season 1 of "The Walking Dead" spin-off "Dead
City" has come to an end, but even after just six episodes,
fans were left with plenty of tantalizing loose threads. Here's what you need to know.
The opening episode of "Dead City" is a flurry of activity. As the show begins,
Hershel has already been kidnapped by the Croat, and Maggie is busy planning her approach to New
York City. Meanwhile, Negan finds himself back in a familiar position. He's wanted for murder
by the marshals of New Babylon, a government that we haven't seen before now. Negan has also built
a relationship with a young orphan named Ginny. She hasn't spoken since finding her father's
reanimated corpse, but she and Negan seem to have struck up a deep, trusting relationship.
Maggie finds Negan and explains that the Croat stole all of her people's food and took off
with her son as a hostage. The Croat just so happens to be a former member of the Saviors,
and Maggie wants Negan's help tracking him down. Ginny agrees to stay with Maggie's
people at a settlement called the Bricks while Maggie and Negan go to save Hershel. The two of
them head toward New York, but the marshals, led by Perlie Armstrong, are in hot pursuit.
Once in the city, Maggie and Negan connect with a group of local survivors who have been
tormented by the Croat and his people. They all come up with a plan to attack
the villainous leader that should get everyone what they want, but,
as is often the case in the "Walking Dead" universe, the plan doesn't go smoothly.
Back at the Bricks, Ginny decides that she's done waiting around for Negan to return, so she heads
to New York City on her own. Meanwhile, Maggie stumbles into proof, in the form of a green,
stuffed dinosaur, that Ginny is in the city, which puts her in an uncomfortable position.
Maggie decides to keep her discovery from Negan,
in part because she's actually been lying to him since the very beginning of the show.
But before Maggie's biggest lie comes to light, one of her new friends walks her entire group into
a trap as they begin their attack on the Croat. Maggie and Ginny make it out alive, but Negan
is separated from the rest of the group. He ends up helping an injured Perlie make it out of the
city alive. When Negan and Maggie finally catch up, she attacks him. After Negan gets the upper
hand and brings the fight to an end, he realizes what's really going on. The Croat never attacked
her people. He kidnapped Hershel to manipulate Maggie with the intent to lure Negan to New York.
"But whatever that crazy sonofabitch wants with me, I sure as shit ain't gonna like it."
Negan isn't thrilled, but he lets himself be traded for Hershel. At that point,
he finds out that the Croat isn't really in charge of the city. Negan meets a woman called the Dama
who runs things from behind the scenes. She wants Negan to become the brutal leader he once was. She
needs him to take charge of the survivors in New York before an inevitable attack from New Babylon.
Negan is just beginning to consider her offer when the season closes out.
Though "Dead City" doesn't spend much time in New Babylon, the government still has
a massive impact on the story. Negan is wanted for breaking New Babylon's laws,
and he spends most of the show being pursued by Perlie, one of New Babylon's marshals.
The Dama and the Croat only go after Negan because they think that New York needs a
strong leader to protect its people and resources from the threat of New Babylon.
In other words, if New Babylon didn't exist, there wouldn't be a show called "Dead City." But
we don't know where it came from, how long it's been around, or who's in charge of the government
there. We know that the community has an extensive list of laws because Perlie quotes articles and
subsections, but we hardly know what any of those laws are, or what purposes they really serve.
Any "Walking Dead" fan who's fully up-to-date with the franchise knows
that post-apocalyptic governments are rarely as benevolent as they present themselves to be.
The fact that a new one has popped up shouldn't be all that surprising,
but it likely isn't a good sign for the protagonists.
Early in the show, Perlie reveals himself as a no-nonsense lawman who's willing to
dole out brutal consequences to anyone who disobeys New Babylon's rules. Most crimes,
it seems, are punishable by death.
"Which means in the code 14 section 2 of New Babylon law, he'll be executed."
Perlie's ferocious commitment to enforcing the law is what drives
him to chase Negan all the way to New York City.
By the end of the show, Perlie has started to rethink his moral positioning. His pursuit
of Negan leads to the death of several other marshals and almost gets him killed too. Perlie
would have died by walkers or the Croat's people if Negan didn't choose to help him get to safety.
On their way out of the city, Perlie reveals his crisis of conscience to Negan. He used to
think that right and wrong were easy to see, but now he's beginning to wonder if everything
is just varying shades of gray. Perlie is finally learning a lesson that Negan learned a long time
ago. People are complicated, and the apocalypse has made them even harder to understand. Everyone
wants what's best for themselves, but no one can agree on what that is. There may be a
bigger conflict coming, but it's not so obvious anymore where Perlie will stand when it arrives.
"Dead City" takes place several years after the end of the main "Walking Dead" series.
In that time Hershel has grown up quite a bit, and he's clearly absorbed his mom's
tough-as-nails attitude. The first time he shows up in the new series,
he stares down the Croat and says he won't answer any questions, even under the threat of torture.
As the season progresses, we get a deeper insight into who Hershel is now,
and he might not be as callous as he tries to appear. When he was still at the Bricks,
Hershel was less interested in training with weapons than working on his drawings. He also
struggles with being a teenager in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.
Hershel and Maggie were butting heads well before the Croat showed up, and by the end of the show,
it's obvious that one more life-and-death scenario has done little to improve their relationship.
"People could come at you with anything." "Then I guess I'd be dead."
After Maggie finally rescues her son, he accuses her of being more interested in getting revenge on
Negan than in saving him. That isn't exactly true, but it's a sign that Maggie's unhealed
trauma has inadvertently damaged her relationship with Hershel. Since he didn't live through those
painful early years of the zombie apocalypse, he has a wildly different view of the world. He and
Maggie have some work to do together if they want to get their relationship back on track.
Through most of "Dead City," Maggie and Negan have a semi-antagonistic
relationship that may have fans of the original series scratching their heads.
Season 11 of "The Walking Dead" forced Maggie and Negan to work together, and at the end of
the season, it seemed that the two of them had come to an uneasy understanding. Negan
wasn't about to be Maggie's new bestie, but she at least seemed content to let him live out his life.
"Dead City" resets their relationship, but it's possible that whatever happened in between the
two series put "Kill Negan" back on Maggie's list of priorities. Even though Negan doesn't
realize that Maggie intends on trading him to the Croat for Hershel, from the very beginning
he seems resigned to sacrificing himself to make up for what he's done in the past. That
changes after he learns that Maggie lied to him about why she brought him to New York,
but also about Ginny's arrival in the city. Still, he goes along with Maggie's plan to save Hershel.
Does that mean all debts are repaid? Have Maggie and Negan actually put their blood feud to bed?
That seems like a genuine possibility. They're always going to have trouble trusting each other,
but this time around everyone might have learned something about forgiveness, for now.
There's no denying that the Croat is evil, and it's not because he kills and tortures people.
Many fan-favorite characters from "The Walking Dead" have done similar things. What sets the
Croat apart is that he so clearly enjoys causing pain. It's his sadism that makes him a villain.
However, there's also a certain logic to most of what the Croat does. He doesn't hurt people
on a whim but as a means of getting answers, securing power, or reinforcing established
rules. It's also worth noting that the Croat doesn't want power for its own sake.
Like Negan many years ago, he has a real interest in protecting his people. But the
Croat takes things one step further than Negan did back in the days of Sanctuary. He has a
vision for the future that would give everyone in New York City a safe and sustainable life.
If the Croat sees his plan through to fruition,
New York will be completely transformed. He knows how to generate power for the city,
giving people access to luxuries they haven't seen since before the walkers first emerged.
The majority of people in New York would have their lives radically improved by the
Croat's master plan. Unfortunately, the minority would be essentially sacrificed
to the Croat's most sadistic urges, and for that alone, he has to be stopped.
From the beginning, the Croat is set up as the show's big bad. He kidnaps Hershel,
and he's the one tormenting anyone in New York who isn't part of his group. He's a terrifying,
larger-than-life villain, and he's also a brilliant scientist who's
found a way to harness the methane that's trapped in the city's sewers.
"The gas can be pressurized into a liquid fuel."
The natural assumption is that the Croat is calling the shots for his people,
but near the end of the season, "Dead City" reveals that the truth is more complicated.
It turns out that the Croat is actually second-in-command. A mysterious woman known
as the Dama is actually in charge of him and his motorcycle helmet-wearing cronies. The show
doesn't reveal much about the Dama, but she seems to have a different vision for New York's future.
In fact, she acts like she's only tolerating the Croat because of his scientific expertise.
The Dama controls the Croat from the shadows, and at the end of the show, we learn that she
also wants to control Negan. She wants Negan to be the figurehead leading her people,
and she anticipates a war with New Babylon. But beyond Negan, her real motives are still unknown.
Over the past 13 years, "The Walking Dead" has gone through multiple evolutions and
become something that fans back in 2010 never expected. "Dead City" is a continuation of the
original series, but it's also another evolution. The characters have changed,
but so has the real world and the audience that enjoys the franchise.
Sitting down with Collider, "The Walking Dead" universe executive producer Scott
Gimple talked about how "Dead City" connects to our modern world. Maggie
and Negan being forced to work together makes for great drama,
but the tension of the show reaches outside of the screen as well. Gimple said,
"To tell you the truth, it's the kind of story that I think actually
is an incredible utility to the audience nowadays and one that they can relate to."
In that same interview, showrunner Eli Jorné talked about how themes from the original
series are still being developed in "Dead City." Jorné said that the entire franchise
has always tried to present heroes and villains as fully three-dimensional human beings. "Dead
City" is no different, and instead of seeing clear-cut good guys and bad guys, Jorné said,
"You're gonna find a lot of gray messiness, in the best way."
"The Walking Dead" franchise is bigger than ever. The main series has splintered into a
number of miniseries, but those smaller shows are going to give fans the widest view of this
zombie-infested world yet. If "Dead City" is anything to judge by, the upcoming miniseries
will definitely hold onto the DNA that made the original show enduringly popular.
"Dead City" proves that "The Walking Dead" still has some life in it, and it also sets the stage
for plenty of conflicts yet to come. Now fans are dying to see what the relationship between
New Babylon and the Commonwealth is. There's inevitably going to be a war in New York over
the city's near-infinite supply of methane gas. A number of new characters, factions, and locations
have all been introduced, and future miniseries will absolutely be able to expand on them.
Fans can also expect to see Maggie and Negan back in fighting form in the near
future. "Dead City" has already been renewed for a second season,
though it will likely be a while before that season officially arrives on AMC.
In the meantime, fans will be able to catch up with Daryl, Michonne,
and Rick Grimes in shows like "Daryl Dixon" and "The Ones Who Live." The universe is growing, but
no matter where our favorite characters go next, one thing's for certain: trouble will follow.