‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 2 Episodes 5 and 6 review

After all the excitement and pageantry of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Episode 4 so many plot lines come together. But, with so many characters and adversaries emerging, a tipping point was bound to occur.  The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Episodes 5 and 6 are both shocking and manage to push this story into its endgame.

Shock factor

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Episode 5, titled “The Bird Always Knows,” had majority of the shocking moments. The story focuses on two situations on a direct collision course. The first deals with Dama picking Negan instead of the Croat to go and forcibly recruit the final group led by Christos (the leader that Negan electrified with Lucielle). Negan goes and quickly realizes that Christos’s base is full of women and children. This causes Negan to have a change of heart, but then the Croat arrives unannounced and eliminates Christos and his men using gas, supposedly sparing the women and children.

Surrenders and escapes

Negan then begins playing mind games with the Croat and making him realize the Dama sees him as one of her rats in a maze and not a respected leader. This leads to the Croat confronting the Dama and, after Negan kills one of her rats and makes it look like the Croat did it, the two fight and the Dama ends up trapped and burned alive as the Croat watches. Meanwhile, Maggie is dealing with multiple issues in Central Park. She’s weary of Hershel after Negan’s comment about him working for the Dama. Narvaez has detained Perlie and Roksana and taken his authority over the others due to his admission that Negan is alive. Maggie also gets wrapped into a plan to draw Negan and the Croat out so New Babylon can ambush them.

Maggie attempts to free Perlie but decides to fight back against Narvaez herself. This leads to a tense standoff between Maggie and Narvaez who has Hershel hostage with the help of Ginny. After realizing she has failed, Maggie surrenders and is now bound for public  execution along with Perlie and Roksana by Narvaez. After Roksana is hanged and Maggie is seconds away from following suit, walkers break in and cause a chaotic scene that allows Maggie, Hershel, and Ginny to escape just as Narvaez is killed by a walker. Unfortunately, they run directly into Bruegel who claims he’s here to save them.

The fallout

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2Episode 6, titled “Bridge Partners Are Hard To Come By These Days,” deals with the fallout and the losses from the previous episode. Once again, two stories collide into one. Negan and the Croat talk about what happens now that the Dama is gone and the Croat is in charge. Can Negan leave now that the Dama is no longer threatening him to stay? The Croat claims that when Negan’s family arrives the next day that he is free to leave, but Negan doesn’t seem too convinced. As the Croat saddens at the thought of being alone, he realizes that Negan betrayed his trust with the Dama and the two fight in the church. This leads to Negan overpowering the Croat and banishing him from the group, making Negan the new “leader”.

Negan now begrudgingly is in charge of these people and decides to not even see his family and immediately turn them around back to their home. Then, when he least expects it, an injured Ginny appears, and he takes her inside to take care of her.

Striking a deal

Meanwhile, Maggie is with Bruegel after being “rescued” by him and his men and brought back to the museum. He’s overly kind and treating Maggie and her group as royalty, but no one is buying it. He offers a deal — if Maggie agrees to help fend off New Babylon when they arrive, he will help then take out the Croat’s forces. While they think this over, something big and dangerous is nearby and is taking out Bruegel’s men. Maggie catches Hershel collecting walker blood to use against New Babylon, and just as they’re about to argue about it, a massive grizzly bear appears and begins hunting Maggie and Hershel through Bruegel’s Museum. This leads to a wild fight for survival (and Hershel showing off his knife throwing skills).

After the bear is killed, Maggie and Negan run into each other yet again and Negan fills Maggie in on all that has changed in the Croat’s group. As this meeting happens, Bruegel and Perlie play a tense card game where it’s revealed that Bruegel knows everything about New Babylon thanks to Narvaez’s final words.

Final thoughts

These two episodes were monumental to the overall story of The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2. They contained the deaths of big players like the Dama and Narvaez, the breakdown of the “brotherhood” between Negan and the Croat, and a bear. Despite how much these episodes covered, they were well-paced and visually pleasing. Although there were many great performances, the shining moment was the fight between Negan and the Croat in the church. The fight and the dialogue in this scene were some of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s best in the series.

The landscape of this season of The Walking Dead: Dead City has changed in these two episodes. With only two left this season, we’re about to see who the true villain is and where Negan and Maggie will land in this conflict. With everyone aiming their sights at Negan, will he choose Maggie and Ginny or will he embrace his old ways with this new army that he now controls?

Tyler Carlsen

From a young age, Tyler has been amazed by filmmaking and writing. When he’s not watching movies in theaters, he also enjoys playing video games and binging one of the numerous shows he’s watching at any given moment. Working with The Young Folks was a highlight of his writing career and he is looking forward to this new adventure with In Between Drafts!