Lauren Ridloff returns in the show’s scariest episode ever
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
The Walking Dead: “On The Inside”
Season 11, Episode 6
Airdate: 9/26/2021
Just when you think The Walking Dead couldn’t live up to expectations of a horror show, they prove everyone wrong.
This was genuinely the scariest episode of this show that has ever been broadcast, and for a show eleven seasons into its run, that’s quite an accomplishment. I remember people saying that “Evolution” back in Season 9 was the scariest that this show had been in years, but “On The Inside” makes that episode look like child’s play.
Lauren Ridloff’s Connie is finally back in full force after an extended absence from the show, and what an episode to return to. Directed by the show’s most prolific director, Greg Nicotero, her story resumes in the most horrific way imaginable. We last saw Connie very briefly in “A Certain Doom” when she was found in bad shape by Virgil, who is partly responsible for sending Michonne on her way.
The duo have been surviving together for some time, and seem to have struck up a great partnership. But their journey almost ends in a house of horrors. In a really frightening turn of events, the pair are lulled into a false sense of security before it becomes clear that the home isn’t full of walkers, but feral human beings instead. They are astonishingly filthy and malnourished, they are aggressively violent, they’re hiding in the walls and they have no problem eating people, as Connie finds out when she’s chased into a basement full of human bones.
When showrunner Anglea Kang said this part of the season would be darker, she definitely wasn’t kidding. Thankfully the episode ends on a happy note, as Connie is finally reunited with her sister Kelly and the Alexandrian survivors, but man, was it a harrowing journey to get there. A thrilling journey, but this one’s going to stick with me in my head for a while.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
– This episode was really, really good and it’s hard to say anything bad about it. Lauren Ridloff is an amazing actress, and her scenes are some of the highlights of the show. It’s amazing that she took a character that did absolutely nothing in the comics and made her such an important character in the show’s lore simply by nature of being really unique and good. I don’t think it was something the powers that be expected, but I’m glad they rolled with it.
– In particular, the scenes with Connie where there is no sound work really well, as they did with “Bounty” back in Season 9. This episode makes them even more effective, as you have to rely on the visual cues instead of the sound cues in order to feel the full effect of what Connie experiences.
– I know he’s probably needed to tell everyone what happened to Michonne (nobody knows but Judith, and Judith ain’t no snitch), but you can’t tell me Virgil shouldn’t be dead after one of those feral humans stabbed him through his back with an entire metal pole.
– Carol is definitely breathing a sigh of relief now that she knows Connie is alive.
– Daryl was also in this episode, and perhaps The Reapers and Pope aren’t as gullible as I thought they were. Pope seems to know something, and I think Daryl is in trouble if he doesn’t act fast enough.
– Connie is better than Leah by a country mile, and I hope that Daryl realizes this when he gets word that the former is alive.
– This might be the first episode since his introduction where Negan appears but has no lines. It felt weird. Never do that again, show.
