‘The Walking Dead’: A Plague of Locusts Descends in Final Midseason Finale (RECAP)
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[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 16, “Acts of God.”]
Everyone thinks the Almighty is on their side in “Acts of God,” and that might just be true.
In addition to the Biblical connections (there is a literal plague of locusts), quite a bit happens in the show’s final midseason finale — and it sets up what should be an exciting final batch of eight episodes.
As usual, the story is split into multiple threads; one is Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and her team, another is Daryl (Norman Reedus), Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) and Aaron (Ross Marquand), and the last is Team “Resist the Commonwealth.”
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Team Maggie, knowing that Maggie’s in grave danger gets her son and a few others who can’t fight out of the community. They’ll be staying with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who is taking cover in a convenient former Whisperers hidey-hole with his people in the middle of the woods. Before leaving her son with him, Maggie and Negan have a nice heart to heart about how Maggie is “starting to” be able to trust him because she’ll “never forget” how he saved Hershel. We’re inching closer and closer to that spinoff, y’all!
Speaking of which, that spinoff news kind of ruins the tension of the rest of the episode. Maggie and the rest of her team go back to Hilltop, where they booby-trap a building to explode once the Commonwealth soldiers enter. That works on the Commonwealth soldiers, but not on Leah (Lynn Collins), who comes after Maggie in the aftermath and kills one of her people. She manages to capture Maggie and knocks her out, and she brings her to her and Daryl’s old cabin.
There, she tells Maggie she’s going to kill her whole family as recompense for what Maggie did to her. Maggie, working on getting free of her restraints, keeps Leah talking for long enough to break out, and then she lunges at her. They fight for a bit — each one nearly dealing the other a killing blow — and then Leah gains the upper hand. She’s poised to stab Maggie in the heart (except we know she won’t, because, spinoff) and then Daryl appears and shoots her in the head.
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Throughout the time Maggie’s been dealing with Leah, Daryl and his pals have escaped the Commonwealth soldiers and are finding their way through the woods on their own. (One would think this doesn’t bode well for any of them being able to get back into the Commonwealth.) They discover that Leah is after Maggie and track them to the cabin, where Daryl arrives just in time to take Leah down. Not a whole lot happens with their storyline, although they do get a cool shootout in an RV yard against the soldiers.
Back at the Commonwealth, Eugene (Josh McDermitt) and Max (Margot Bingham) chat about the whole “resistance” thing, and while Eugene tells her it’s okay if she backs out, Max’s committed to it. She goes to work and — in a likely last-ditch attempt to prove there’s some good in the Milton family — she asks her boss if the $50,000 that was over-budgeted for the latest Commonwealth ‘do could be repurposed into a “scholarship fund” for families in need. Pamela’s stunned and pretends to consider it, but she says the funds must be allocated to the event. Right. Sure.
Jace Downs/AMC
Unsurprisingly, this convinces Max to go ahead with it. She’s nearly caught stealing the file by a very drunk Sebastian (Teo Rapp-Olson), but she manages to get away without him seeing what’s inside. Nonetheless, it feels like that’ll be relevant later. And that night, most of the resistance group meets, including Magna (Nadia Hilker), Connie (Lauren Ridloff) and Kelly (Angel Theory) and even Ezekiel (Khary Payton). It’s revealed that Pamela is hiding people at coordinates indicated in the files, but Connie can’t write about that yet — instead, her first article is about the heist from a few episodes ago.
As the episode ends, Daryl, Maggie and their friends barely manage to escape the soldiers and Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton) as they descend on the cabin. Hornsby and his crew drape Alexandria, Oceanside and what’s left of Hilltop with Commonwealth flags while, at the Commonwealth, a very unhappy Pamela throws the day’s newspaper across Max’s desk. And Hornsby heads to Oceanside, where all the people are being rounded up at gunpoint: He tosses his coin, and the screen goes black… until the final eight episodes premiere later this year.
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Other Observations
- This show almost made me feel bad for Sebastian there, when he seemed hurt that he’d have to put in a request to be able to talk to his own mother. Then again, with a son like Sebastian, maybe it’s understandable if Pamela wants it to be difficult for him to reach her.
- Is Eugene… no longer a virgin? I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to gather that from context clues (he and Max are, at the very least, sleeping in the same bed now). They weren’t quite as obvious about it as Mercer (Michael James Shaw) and Princess (Paola Lazaro) last week.
- That title had to be a red herring. There’s no way the people behind the scenes didn’t guess fans would be nervous about Gabriel with a midseason finale title that invokes God. No matter. It’s good that he’s safe for now.
- I can’t help but think how intense this episode might have been if the Maggie-Negan spinoff hadn’t been announced. The scenes of Maggie and Leah hunting each other in the forest were already nail-biters, but if we hadn’t known for certain that Maggie lived, they would’ve been incredible. Oh, well.
- Speaking of incredible, how about that music in the final scene?
- Rating: 4.5/5. With strong performances from Lauren Cohan, Lynn Collins and Josh Hamilton, “Acts of God” is a fantastic final midseason finale.
The Walking Dead, Returns 2022, AMC
