WARNING: The following contains spoiler for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 13, “Warlords,” which aired Sunday, March 20 on AMC.
Time jumps have always been a strategic plot device in The Walking Dead universe to emphasize a community’s growth and survivor’s maturity, but the temporal leaps have really been the trend in recent seasons. The flashbacks are beginning to resemble those of ABC’s Lost, which set the curve for time jumping in television.
Lost relied on its use of flashbacks and flashforwards to provide additional insight on the survivors of the Flight 815 plane crash on a mysterious and supernatural island. Over time, the use of these sequences always circled back to the original plot, revealing deep connections between the survivors and the island. The Walking Dead is attempting something slightly similar, in that it wants small decisions seen in the present storyline to impact those of the teased future. The issue with the latest episode, “Warlords,” is that the time jumps are not exactly necessary for the narrative.
Season 11, Episode 9 made a clear mark of what audiences should anticipate. The end of the episode flashes forward six months to Maggie and Daryl on two different sides of an argument. Daryl, fully dressed in Commonwealth soldier attire, demands a resilient Maggie to let the Commonwealth into Hilltop. It’s a short scene that teases the future conflict just enough to keep viewers engaged for future interactions between the two of them. The next episode jumps a month after meeting Lance, going back to the present day, but utilizes its time hop to skip all of the Commonwealth exposition that was already seen in Season 10.
This is where it gets a little confusing. Supposedly, each episode proceeding is skipping a few weeks at a time. What’s going on in those weeks is up in the air, but “Warlords” tries to take a stab at answering that question. The episode opens on Hilltop sometime after Maggie refused Pamela’s offer to rebuild Hilltop. A young man, bleeding to death, rides up on horseback with a map and asking for help. After Aaron runs up to Maggie traveling to the scene, it jumps a week prior to Aaron asking Gabriel to join him on his mission. From then on, the episode jumps presumably a few days later to the actual mission, and makes one more flashback — emphasizing it was a week and one hour ago — until it reaches present day.
The use of these flashbacks were to show that the mission’s true nature is to kill off the group Aaron believes he is sent to recruit. It’s effective for that one true intent, but the rest make the episode a giant puzzle for viewers to figure out. Aaron talking to Gabriel in their flashback scene revealed nothing but Gabriel finding his faith again. Having Maggie’s group as outsiders to this entire mission leads to the mystery being exposed at the end of the episode, but is overshadowed by the confusion of where The Walking Dead is currently in its own timeline.
With Lost, every flashback had a purpose, even if it seemed unimportant at first. Viewers sometimes had to wait seasons for a flashback to come full circle, but The Walking Dead doesn’t have seasons to spare. Lost stuck to its formula; there was before the crash and after the crash (and the flash sideways alternate world). The times it did go astray, it did try its best to explain the timeline. With The Walking Dead, there’s no before and after anything because they’re including multiple time jumps in one episode. Because of this, the show is making little efforts to convey a clear timeline of when everything is going on.
Would “Warlords” have been better without the flashbacks? Yes, with the exception of Lance and Toby’s interaction that revealed what the mission really was. But hopefully, it’s all leading up to a bigger conflict and grand scheme of things. Maggie and Daryl have opposing viewpoints on the Commonwealth situation, but it’s not at a threatening level quite yet. But if future Walking Dead episodes are following the formula of “Warlords,” viewers better get out a pencil and paper to draw up their own timeline.
To try to make sense of The Walking Dead’s timeline, watch Season 11, Episode 13 on AMC+. New episodes of The Walking Dead air every Sunday at 9 pm ET on AMC, and new episodes are available to stream a week early on AMC+.
About The Author
