A beautifully shot episode shows our group in more dire straits than ever before
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
The Walking Dead: “Hunted”
Season 11, Episode 3
Airdate: 9/5/2021
“Hunted” really showed that the show’s decision to film on digital cameras instead of their traditional film really has paid off. The cinematography on “The Walking Dead” is as great as it has ever been and the writing of the show isn’t too shabby, either.
At times, “Hunted” reminded me of the sleeper classic episode from season 6, “JSS.” Not necessarily in terms of the pacing, because JSS went full-throttle on the violence about nine minutes in and never let up. This episode is definitely slower in some points, and that’s probably for the best.
But where “Hunted” reminds me of “JSS ” concerns the antagonists on display, as well as the level of violence. The Reapers are as fast as any villains ever seen on the show, and seemingly have no other motivation than to wreak havoc and kill as many people as possible. The Wolves also did this in “JSS,” but The Reapers look more well-organized. And somehow, they’re a lot scarier, probably because they are a lot harder to defeat.
Pretty much all of the characters are injured by The Reapers, and almost all of Maggie’s old traveling companions don’t make it out of the hour alive, sans Elijah, who just kind of vanishes.
From literally the first second of the episode, The Reapers are just demolishing our group. Cole, the show’s Jesus clone, gets his throat slit literally 30 seconds in, and he’s a goner. Father Gabriel also gets his throat cut, but he lives. Daryl runs after Dog, never to be seen again for the remainder of the hour (don’t worry, next week makes up for that). Even Negan gets hit.
Maggie is left alone, and wanders upon an abandoned mall. After dodging yet another attack from a Reaper, she comes across yet another in a dark stairwell, and she barely sees him coming. She throws him off a balcony, only to hear him running back up the steps, and then she’s attacked again in an old, long vacant department store. In a move that’s not likely to please her, Negan and Alden end up being the ones to save her, although Alden is badly injured in the process. Eventually, the decision is made, by Maggie and at the insistence of Alden, to leave him behind in a church, and Maggie and Negan strike out on their own to continue forward.
Maggie and Negan being forced to work together on their own is not the scenario that I envisioned when he bashed her husband’s brains in, but it is deliciously ironic. I fully expect a conversation like Rick and Negan had in issue #164 in the comic in the very near future.
Elsewhere, Father Gabriel seems to be the only one of the group to definitively kill a Reaper. He finds one lying on a log, and puts him out of his misery. Father Gabriel is such a good character, and Seth Gilliam does the role justice. I genuinely can’t imagine another person in the role.
And back in Alexandria, Carol and some others go out and round up some horses that ran off. However, Carol kills one of them so that the community can have some food. It’s genuinely one of the sadder scenes on this show, and it’s very clear that Carol is feeling the weight of her choices from last season and how they affected others. I mean, everything they built is in shambles now.
Maggie insists that the situation everyone is in right now is Negan’s fault, and that’s not entirely true… Carol was the one who released Negan in the first place. Melissa McBride is doing a wonderful job right now portraying this role, and that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Next week, Daryl gets a good storyline, and we get to learn more about The Reapers and how they operate.
SCATTERED OBSERVATIONS:
– Alden is definitely getting hung on that cross.
– It feels weird but I think I’m still on Negan’s side when it comes to a lot of what he says. He may be a jerk, but he’s got good points.
– I really hope they’re paying Lauren Cohan a lot of money.
– I never really liked anyone from Maggie’s group, so I’m not sad they all died. Especially Cole, the guy who got his throat slit. Cole was just a debbie downer.
– For anyone who might be wondering… Jadis popped up in a newly released trailer for Season 2 of The Walking Dead: World Beyond. While I didn’t review the remainder of that first season as I intended to do, I will say that it built up to a crescendo quite nicely, and the new season, premiering on Oct. 3, looks really good. Adding Jadis in is an intriguing development, and I’m excited to see how much she has changed in her time away.
