Welcome back to Dead City, where Armstrong and Negan escaped the Croat by the skin of their teeth and now need to decide whether they’ll work together or be at each other’s throats back to New Babylon. The rest of the crew is traveling in the tunnels underneath, trying to understand how much went wrong in their plan to take out the Buratzi. With so much on the line for the [enultimate episode, let’s jump right into “Stories We Tell Ourselves.”
1. New Plan
Negan and Marshall Armstrong realize that regardless of the bounty on Negan’s head, they must find a way out of the city. Armstrong pushes them towards the city docks, and Negan continuously mentions that there are no boats, the ones they came in on are surely sunk or destroyed by the Buratzi. However, Armstrong is a local New Yorker. Because of his previous experience before the breakout disease, he knows that one of the docks is detachable from the pier, and they can use that to get across the water. It’s a straightforward plan that sounds like it could work fairly easily, but getting across the city with an army of crazed soldiers and walkers isn’t as easy.
2. Snake in the grass
Maggie, Ginny, Amaia, and Tomasso go through the methane-filled tunnels beneath the city after their attempt to remove the Buratzi fails. Everyone is understandably on edge, but Maggie is still looking for a reason for how it could have failed the way it did and realizes, much like myself, that someone must have shared the plan. As she’s trying to go through everyone’s motivations, Tomasso “all of a sudden” finds two oxygen tanks so they can travel safely without being poisoned. Once again, though, Detective Maggie notices that he didn’t just find the tanks on the ground, he had pulled off his backpack right before, and thus, he must have had it all along. Without even much pushing after being called out, Tomasso immediately confesses to sharing the plan with the Croat, thinking his friends would have been given a chance to join them or fight off the zombies for survival. He went in hoping they could have a chance at a better life on the mainland; the Croat had told him about Hilltop. Amaia is immediately disgusted and disappointed with the decision of the man she loves. Maggie doesn’t say much after because she can understand where he comes from once Hilltop is described. However, it still wasn’t the right move.
3. The True Master
As Negan had mentioned before, with his relationship with the Croat, he was a torturer and master of getting what he wanted by any means. Still, he seemed to have yet to have an overall big plan, at least from an audience’s perspective. How the Croat handled hunting Negan showed that things could get under his skin and make him lose focus, especially someone so vital from his past. This brings me to this current episode, where we find out someone else is pulling the strings by the name of, The Dama. We’re not given much information on what exactly she does, but the fact that he went to her club and is talking to her like a dog with his tail in between his legs shows everything we need to know. The Dama gives us Pamela Milton vibes from the last two seasons of the main show, and maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, but it’s a small glimpse into the bigger antagonist in the shadows.
4. Maggie, The Liar
After a small wave of zombies killed Amaia and Tomasso, Ginny and Maggie were the only two people left. They have to go through this room filled with corpses of already killed zombies when Maggie’s foot gets caught, and she accidentally wakes up this mashed-up walker with four heads, six arms, and a giant body made of two sets of bodies. It’s big, disgusting, a little scary, but she gets through it quickly enough to showcase the ugly monster and then move on. Maggie forces Ginny out as she fights the creature one-on-one but struggles to find her in the aftermath. Instead, a message smeared in blood says, “Liar.” Then we get a flashback of when the Croat first took Hershel from Maggie, and without saying a word, he hands her the folded-up bounty post for Negan. Thus, breaking open the truth bomb that he was the bait to get back her son. Ginny was savvy because she was looking for her father at the time of the kidnapping, and she never drew any attention to herself because she didn’t talk. The episode ends with Ginny shooting a flare into the sky to warn Negan and perhaps everyone else in the city.
5. Gray Area
Much like the episode’s title, the theme goes with the characters discovering things aren’t always as black and white as they wish. Negan’s gripe with Maggie this season has come from her treating him like day one after killing Glenn when it’s her way of justifying why she brought him to this deranged place. Marshall Armstrong realizes the truth behind the hardships he went through with his brother and his brother’s drug addiction. It cost him and his parents a relationship and trust, but when he realized his brother had been left behind when the disease spread and the bridges were cut off, Armstrong realized the addiction cost him much more. The toughest realization came from Tomasso, who thought giving up the plan to the Croat would be a better opportunity for Amaia and his friends. His only mindset was getting her to a better place where they could feel safe rather than scraping by in a place they once called home. This episode proves that TWD has more meaning behind its work than it’s often credited for.
