The Walking Dead’s latest episode was a brutal one, but does ‘Not Tomorrow Yet’ change the way we will look at our ‘heroes’ going forward?
With an agreement between the Alexandrians and the people of Hill-Top agreed, Rick says they have no choice but to preemptively attack Negan’s stronghold and erase the threat before Negan’s forces can overcome them. Morgan asks if such an assault on people who’ve yet to attack them is fair, but is out-voted.
Plans are drawn and the assault begins – but at what cost?
Not Tomorrow Yet ups the action-quotient up several degrees – in fact so much so that there are sequences that are reminiscent of a video game shoot ’em up. The attack on the Negan compound is bloody and ruthless, but its lack of a zombie element runs the risk of turning it into a well-executed (no pun intended) war movie or a host of formula action-outings.
It’s also true that that the moral high-ground that Rick and his Alexandrians like to think they own is completely undermined. It may be understandable pragmatism and world-weariness that fuels their ‘night makes right’ position, but the idea that they a) can efficiently kill any rumoured threat they face without real danger and consequence and b) that they are willing to kill said people in their beds (whom they’ve never met and who have, individually, never threatened them) simply because they are worried those people WILL ultimately attack them shows a hawkish mentality that doesn’t sit well. Viewers are deliberately made to feel uneasy at the choices while understanding the darker impulses that drive them. Readers of The Walking Dead comic will know the real danger that Negan and his forces bring. Rick may not be entirely wrong in the methods needed to stop that danger – to meet it headlong rather than waiting for it to pounce, but neither is he right that there IS no other way. Morgan’s plans may be equally flawed or naive in reasoning, his pacifist ways often unworkable in the apocalyptic world, but his observation that IF there is no danger of not defeating Negan’s forces, why shouldn’t Rick give them the opportunity to walk away from a such confrontation before merely attacking is a reasonable question to ask while sitting in a church.
Cookie/Monster? Carol takes a break from the killing…
While it’s understandable from a ‘fiction’ point-of-view – we need to keep things moving – it seems baffling and stupid that the Alexandrians don’t spend far more time monitoring the Negan compound and formulating a more strategic plan. Yes, they’ve managed to draw up a map of the possible interior, but the whole ‘push’ seems like an unnecessary rush. While we’re all rooting for our heroes, the fact that they DO over-estimate their abilities and we’re left on a ‘not so smart now, eh?’ cliff-hanger is somewhat satisfying for an episode that has made them murderers (and there’s no arguing the description). Glenn – as much as Rick – seems even more compromised. Though he has killed humans before (during the Governor’s assault on the prison) he’s never had to kill while not in active battle. The cost of what he does weighs heavy – and rightly so. Equally, the quieter moments – of which Melissa McBride’s sometimes-savage Carol is ironically pivotal are just as important. With more than a degree of further foreshadowing, Carol has come to enjoy the cookie-making side-line that was once her disguise and we also see her quietly acknowledge her culpability in the events that led to young Sam’s death. Carol also reminds Maggie that the younger woman sometimes has a responsibility to NOT fight now that she is a mother-to-be. Even less comfortably, Abraham breaks up with Rosita with an insensitive talk that is the verbal equivalent of blunt-force-trauma. It’s as if the show is setting up a range of potential emotional trauma and shrapnel that will lay the groundwork for recrimination and regret in the near future?
Die-hard fans know that we’re now gathering speed towards a finale that’s likely to be brutal for our characters, divisive for the audience and pivotal to the direction going forward. Not Tomorrow Yet was not the calm before the storm, but an opening salvo if something quite dark, dirty and apocalyptic in its own right.
In short, fans of The Walking Dead will likely love this well-paced and strong episode… but they may not actually like the characters as much thereafter. They are no longer ‘heroes’, merely survivors.
8/10
