Let’s start this off the right way: I’m extremely grateful that The Walking Dead was able to follow up with an informative episode after the previous week’s brain basher. The focus has shifted from Rick and his group to where Carol and Morgan went after Season 6 had wrapped up. Last we knew, they were both approached by men wearing body armor on horses. It didn’t take long to realize that these men were not from the Saviors, but rather a completely new group, overall. Does this mean they are good or bad? Rest assured these men are here to help.
After a long and seemingly tedious journey to their new destination, Morgan and Carol are finally introduced to a new community that goes by the name of The Kingdom. Morgan seems to be taking in his surroundings with almost a glimmer of new born hope in his eyes, whereas Carol refuses to accept that there is a legitimate community thriving and surviving within these walls, living like there’s nothing wrong. A little tour takes our characters on a path that leads directly to the head honcho himself, King Ezekiel. Comic book fans have been waiting quite a while to see certain characters come to life, and Ezekiel was certainly one of those characters right at the top of the list (right behind Negan, of course). From this episode alone, I feel that they made an excellent casting decision for the character: he is as cool, calm and collected as you could ever imagine. As for Shiva, they certainly did not let us down with the way she looked, and I am very ecstatic about that.
While Carol doesn’t seem to be having any of it, Morgan and Ezekiel appear to strike up a few conversations based off of their own personal beliefs and moral principles. Being the soft-spoken soul that he is (and with his relaxed and realistic approach to the tougher situations he’s encountered), it doesn’t take Morgan very long at all to get on Ezekiel’s good side. They both seem to have the same vision of how the new world should operate, thus creating even more common ground than was previously there only moments ago. After some more discussion, Ezekiel approaches Morgan on the subject of training one of the younger residents of The Kingdom, Benjamin. Though it hasn’t been explained, it seems as if Ben suffered the loss of his father in a rather harsh way that he has been unable to come back from.
This worries Ezekiel greatly; he wants Ben to be able to fend for himself so that he won’t have to be in constant worry over his physical and mental state. He suggests to Morgan that, perhaps, he could train Benjamin the same way Morgan had learned in the previous season (through his own captor). After losing his wife and son, it seemed only a short few seasons back that Morgan felt like he had nothing left to live for. I personally believe this gives him purpose again. Not to say he didn’t have purpose previous to this, but now he can finally put all of his training to good use. To me, this makes me feel like “Passive Morgan” can finally utilize his skills in a way that could potentially change one’s life for the better.
One of the other more interesting things that happened this episode was seeing members of The Kingdom gathering what appeared to be wild pigs. In this process, the animals were lured into an enclosed area, where they would feast on the remains of a decaying walker. Amidst all of the confusion, Morgan soon realizes what is going on; The Kingdom will be giving these pigs to The Saviors, and as one of the Kingdom members told him, they want their stomachs filled with rot. Similar to the members of Terminus, these malicious Saviors will now be consuming, shall I say, “tainted meat”. Let’s hope these Saviors literally “eat shit and die”.
From the new community to Ezekiel and Shiva, we were introduced to a whole lot this episode. We learned that people can still exist in peace and solitude when the world is in utter chaos (no matter what you may believe, Carol). Through this, we were also taught that The Kingdom has the same deal as The Hilltop and Alexandria with The Saviors: give them half of your shit, or Negan and his men will kill you. Whereas The Kingdom seems very well versed in this knowledge, I feel they would definitely attack Negan and his men, so long as they had the manpower and strength in numbers to do so. Ezekiel hinted at this towards the end of the episode, and will now leave us wondering if they will unite with Alexandria and possibly The Hilltop in order to take down the big bad and his clan of haters. Until then, let’s keep tuning in each Sunday night at 9PM Eastern to see where it all goes from here.
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