‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Season 2 Episode 3 review: “Why Did the Mainlanders Cross the River?”

From what we’ve seen in the episodes released so far, you could tell that Hershel was going to be a prominent character this season. In The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2 episode 3, titled “Why Did the Mainlanders Cross the River?” much of the plot revolves around Hershel both in the present and his unseen experience while living in captivity last season. Throw in a post-apocalyptic Central Park and a new group of survivors living in it and we have an episode that wasn’t as strong as the previous few.

A trip to Central Park.

The episode begins with a flashback of Hershel presumably on his first day in captivity after being taken from Maggie by the Croat (the inciting incident that the entire series spawned from). He’s scared and alone in a dark room tied to a chair until the Dama comes in cuts him loose. She asks him if he needs anything and gives him a jacket and, upon his request, a pencil and paper to draw with. We then return to present day with Maggie, Hershel and Ginny journeying into Central Park with the rest of the New Babylon expedition party who escaped the sinking ship. The group soon realizes how dangerous the park is when a walker seemingly appears out of nowhere and takes out one of the survivors.

The group gets further into the park and reaches a giant open field with tall grass that they must cross through. They quickly realize that this is basically a maze filled with walkers, and they have no way of navigating once inside it. In the chaos of everyone being attacked by walkers and chased in different directions, Hershel is separated from Maggie and ends up on his own. After being surrounded by walkers, Hershel is saved by a girl who seems to be part of a group of survivors living off the land in the park. Meanwhile, Negan is still battling his feelings about what he’s being forced to do for the Dama and the Croat. Negan volunteers himself to go into the park and take care of whatever survivors from the New Babylon ship are left. The Croat agrees, but with the stipulation that one of his men accompanies Negan.

Negan has no intention of staying with the Croat’s man and abandons him while he’s being surrounded by walkers. But he escapes and stumbles upon Hershel and the girl and mortally wounds her. Right as he’s about to go after Hershel, Negan appears long enough to kill him and save Hershel before taking off. This allows Hershel to get the girl back to his people and deliver her back to her group. What they experience with this new group is something that was strange, beautiful and terrifying.

Strange new worlds.

This episode felt like a sudden change in the pace of the story. The scenes on which we got to see the flashbacks of Hershel and the Dama were the highlight of the episode and really added more to each character’s development. Even though we know the Dama to be the villain of the series, seeing her as the “compassionate” person helping Hershel in this dark time (even though she put him there) was an interesting twist. This feels different from the redemption arc that we’ve seen Negan on mainly because we know Negan’s intentions are more positive now, whereas the Dama can’t be trusted.

Other than that, the episode felt a bit off for several reasons. The journey into the park felt like something we’ve seen a hundred times in all the shows in this universe. And the new group that was introduced, which we all know is either not going to play a big role going forward or won’t be mentioned again after this episode, just didn’t feel very fleshed out. There was an explanation of who they were and where they came from, but it just didn’t really fit the rest of the story. And the death ceremony they have which included weird singing/chanting and removing the dead person’s heart to offer to the walkers was one of the strangest things I’ve seen in this series, and not in a fun way like blasting walkers out of cannons at a boat like last week.

I think that the first two episodes turning out better than expected set a higher bar for the rest of the season, and this episode just didn’t hit that bar. Except for Hershel’s storyline (and the fantastic performance of Logan Kim), the rest of the episode just felt very mediocre and not up to par with what the season was shaping up to be. Here’s hoping next week gets us back on track.