WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 7, “Promises Broken,” which aired Sunday on AMC.
The first third of The Walking Dead’s Season 11 has a simple goal for its protagonists: preserve the lives of Alexandria’s people by any means possible. The problem is that the appearance of the Pope’s religiously fanatic group has made surviving difficult, especially on the heels of the Whisperer War. However, in “Promises Broken,” Negan and Maggie decide to employ a new tactic that just might allow them to defeat a group with extensive military training.
When Maggie left Hilltop, she traveled all over with Georgie, but she eventually settled down at a place they called Meridian. That’s where she was when the Reapers attacked and killed many of her people. Now that she’s back in Alexandria, the most obvious supply of food is still in Meridian. So, Maggie retaking her former community and the food was the most logical course of action.
After a run-in with the dead inside of a subway tunnel during Season 11’s first and second episodes, Maggie’s team of fighters spent their ammunition critically low. That’s when the Reapers ambushed them on the road and killed nearly half of the group while taking Daryl as a captive. The survivors — many of them wounded — fled the scene and have been on the run ever since. Now, with only Gabriel, Negan and Elijah at her disposal, Maggie needs a new plan.
They need soldiers to fight the Reapers, but since they don’t have any, they decide to coopt the dead into their fight. At Negan’s suggestion, Maggie reluctantly agrees to learn how to herd walkers like a Whisperer. So, Negan finds people that Maggie doesn’t know and proceeds to make masks for the four members of their group.
Apparently, learning how to herd is more difficult than Season 10 showed because the episode highlights Maggie struggling to perfect her walker swagger. Thankfully, Negan is an expert given his experience with Alpha and coaches Maggie along. Thus, Maggie masters the skill and starts to accumulate what becomes a massive horde by the episode’s conclusion. Even though Alpha and her gang were mostly animalistic psychopaths, the tactic of using the dead as a weapon is actually kind of brilliant.
It seems like no matter how big a community is, it always falls when a big enough horde comes along, and it’s high time that Maggie and her people use that tactic for themselves. The Reapers’ military training is superb, but it will only be able to do so much against a herd of countless walkers marching against them.
To see Maggie infiltrate Meridian and attack the Reapers, tune into Season 11 of The Walking Dead. The series airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and is available to stream early on AMC+.
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