The Whisperer War may be over, but the premiere of The Walking Dead's six bonus season 10 episodes
is proof that in the apocalypse, there are always new threats waiting to emerge.
Released on AMC+ on Sunday, February 21, 2021 — a full week before its cable debut
on February 28 — the new episode, entitled "Home Sweet Home," picks up in the aftermath
of the bloody season 10B finale and wastes no time answering some lingering questions.
Longtime Walking Dead fans will likely be thrilled to see that
not only is this new installment Maggie-centric,
but it also features Lauren Cohan once again listed as a main cast member on the series.
"Home Sweet Home" packs a lot of action and exposition into its 41-minute runtime.
Viewers get the lowdown on what Maggie has been up to since she disappeared from the show back
in season 9, as well as deeper insight into the intimidating masked survivor we saw her
with when she reappeared in the season 10B finale. In returning to the show,
Maggie also brought with her a potential new threat to the survivors in Alexandria. That's
not even to mention the complications her arrival could pose for Negan's place in the community.
Here's what went down in The Walking Dead season 10's first bonus episode,
"Home Sweet Home," and what the events and reveals could signify for the future.
After being absent since the time jump in the middle of season 9,
Maggie returned with new allies in tow to help silence the threat of the Whisperers.
Since leaving Alexandria, Maggie has been traveling from community to community with
her son Hershel. We only meet two members of the group she's currently with at the beginning
of the episode, as the rest are hunkered down in a basecamp with young Hershel.
Maggie and her new allies team up with Daryl and Kelly to find their way back to the rest
of the group. Through this mission, it becomes clear that Maggie's strength,
compassion, and determination have made her a natural leader for this new group.
She has a particularly close relationship with Elijah, the formerly unnamed masked survivor we
met in the season 10B finale. Elijah's silent and intimidating appearance made some fellow
survivors uneasy. However, in this episode, we get some surprising insight into his character.
While the group is camping out overnight on their way to meet up with Maggie's people, Kelly wanders
off while she's supposed to be on guard duty. She's discovered the next morning inspecting some
clothing on a crashed truck nearby, and Maggie confronts her about her abandonment of the group.
Daryl explains that in the midst of everything else,
Kelly is still trying to find her sister Connie, who has been missing since earlier in season 10.
Maggie accepts this explanation and tells Kelly that Elijah also recently lost his own sister.
When the group gets entangled in a dangerous situation later on
in the episode, Kelly notices that Elijah seems to be frozen in fear.
She asks him to lift up his mask. He does, and reveals that he's a young man who does
indeed look incredibly anxious about the danger they've found themselves in.
For Elijah, the scary mask he wears is quite literally a cover to shield
himself from the outside world. With it on, people are intimidated by him,
but only because they can't see that underneath, he's the one who's terrified.
Kelly gives him a quick pep talk, and later,
Elijah shares some food with her to cement their budding friendship.
It remains to be seen whether Elijah will become stronger and more confident moving forward,
which would be beneficial to him and his fellow survivors the inevitable
next time they're in trouble, or if the dangers of the world around him will become
too much and cause him to slip further into fear and potentially lead to a tragic end.
The Walking Dead has seen enough death and destruction over the years,
so hopefully Elijah's narrative arc will be a positive, uplifting one — or
at least as positive and uplifting as things can get in a zombie show.
Maggie's journey to reunite with the rest of her group takes a tragic turn when she
arrives at the shelter they've been using and finds it ransacked and burned to the ground.
There are several dead bodies among the wreckage, but Hershel is missing. Although the perpetrators
of this attack are nowhere to be seen, Maggie and her allies seem to know exactly who did it:
the Reapers, whom Cole believes have been following their group.
"It's them. They found us."
The crew splits up to find any survivors of the attack, and eventually, Maggie and
Daryl come across three other members of her group who got away. However,
someone with a sniper rifle hiding in the woods quickly picks the trio off.
The sniper eventually emerges and reveals himself
to be completely decked out in camouflage and tactical gear.
After a scuffle, Maggie and Daryl get the upper hand against the sniper. Maggie attempts to
get answers out of the man, whose group has been attacking them for seemingly no reason.
"Who are you? Who are you? What do you call yourselves?"
Instead of giving her answers, the man pulls the
pin out of a grenade strapped to his chest and blows himself up.
It's unclear what exactly the Reapers' true purpose is,
especially since they don't have any connections to the Walking Dead comics.
Considering that the sniper was equipped with several weapons, was wearing attire
designed for stealthiness, and was outfitted in tactical gear, it seems plausible that the
Reapers' members may have military experience from their lives pre-zombie apocalypse.
They may even be off-shoots of or somehow related to the Commonwealth,
or possibly the Civil Republic Military. Whatever their background, it's clear
that the Reapers aren't some slapped-together faction of survivors who are winging things.
They're organized, ruthless, and will evidently stop at nothing to
meet their goals -- whatever those goals may be.
Regardless of what their mission ends up being,
this certainly isn't the last we'll see of this new enemy in The Walking Dead season 10.
After the run-in with the Reapers' sniper, Maggie goes off to find her
son. Thankfully for Maggie, she's raised young Hershel in her resourceful image,
and she eventually finds him safe and hiding in a tree.
With her son by her side but her group in shambles, Maggie decides
to accompany Daryl and Kelly back to Alexandria. There's the promise of safety in numbers,
which Maggie needs right now, but returning to Alexandria isn't an easy decision for her.
At the beginning of "Home Sweet Home," Maggie also comes face-to-face with Negan.
Viewers have seen his character go through many twists and turns
over the course of the series, but for Maggie,
he'll always be the man who brutally killed her husband Glenn all those years ago.
It's clear that Maggie isn't interested in living
anywhere near Negan -- and you can't really blame her for that.
"The truth is, I left home because I couldn't have Negan taking up any more space in my head. Then I
realized I didn't want to bring Hershel back to that."
However, throughout the episode Maggie realizes that she has no choice but to
go back to Alexandria, where Negan lives.
She tells Carol that she doesn't hold any hard feelings against
her for bringing Negan into the Alexandria mix to help with the Whisperer situation,
and assures Daryl that she'll deal with her feelings for the good of her group.
As she walks back into town for the first time in years,
Maggie wears a look of hardened determination. The camera lingers on Negan as he watches her
walk by, possibly indicating that tensions between him and Maggie are far from over.
Both characters have undergone huge changes over the years, and things really could
go either way for Maggie and Negan as the remaining episodes of season 10 play out.
In a perfect world, Negan never would have done what he did and Maggie could return to
Alexandria without any qualms — but it seems the best anyone can do here is hope that Negan
and Maggie's volatile past doesn't make their current situation any worse than it needs to be.
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