“It’s a sh*t-pile of sh*t-infested sh*t.” No, that’s not my description of the season. It’s an ode to the fact that Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is back in full force for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3, and I couldn’t be happier. While the expletive-laden rants that he is prone to deliver are par for the course for the character, they are thankfully not reflective of this season of the post-apocalyptic horror drama as it continues to follow the journey of our favorite barbed-wire bat-carrying villain Negan and farm girl turned badass leader Maggie (Lauren Cohan). Pleasantly, Season 3 is a welcome return to form, which was sorely needed after that lackluster second season.
To say I was less than enthused with Season 2 would be an understatement. It felt like Negan had been cut off at the knees. He was a shell of his former volatile, foul-mouthed, vicious self. Sure, there were tiny glimpses of the old him, but something was missing as the story shifted to embellished theatrics with ridiculous plotlines and uninspired villains.
Maggie, meanwhile, was so consumed by her hatred for Negan that I felt as annoyed as Hershel (Logan Kim) at her inability to move forward. Not that she’s wrong in feeling how she feels, of course, but the result of her story weighing so heavily on her hatred of Negan was that Maggie’s arc fell flat. Both issues, I’m happy to report, have been corrected this season.
The show finally found a way to present Maggie in a more palatable light, and make Negan, well, Negan again. That sounds dangerous, yet the plot carefully tiptoes around his prior redemption arc, ensuring the progress made isn’t entirely lost in the process. While the Negan who bashed Glenn’s (Steven Yuen) and Abraham’s (Michael Cudlitz) skulls needs to remain in the rearview mirror, Season 2 pushed the needle too far in the other direction. We don’t want that Negan again, though we do need the same ruthless, overconfident narcissist we love to hate.
The transition is a believable storyline. A leopard can’t change his spots, as they say, but he can change his prey. Negan can be in Maggie’s corner, never daring to cross her again and still feeling immense guilt for what he did to her. He is also, deep down, always Negan. He has been paying his penance while the two formed an unlikely and reluctant alliance though, deep down, he’s a feral animal who, without the right person to stop him before he goes too far, will almost always go too far.
The season is a love letter to redemption stories for both main characters, and it almost, at times, feels like the end of the journey. (Even if it is, with The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon coming back for a final season, there’s still hope for that massive character reunion fans have been hoping to get.)
While this season is largely about Negan and Maggie accepting the gravitational pull between them, new characters are standouts, too. Aimee Garcia is wonderful as Renata, a survivor with big dreams and a fearless attitude, and also a level of softness. Raúl Castillo is the new beating heart of the season, while Jimmi Simpson is a scene stealer as the eccentric Dillard, a character he brilliantly captures in a way that makes him so different from anyone else you’ve seen on the show to date.
The strong, emotional start is like a throwback to what The Walking Dead once was. You get intense, graphically stunning scenes. There are moments that will make you feel conflicting emotions, and you see the group face difficult decisions about when and if they should let others into a community. The season is a reminder that in a world like this one, it’s other survivors you need to worry about more so than the dead.
That’s a recycled storyline we’ve seen before on the show and all its spin-offs, yet it has a different urgency this time, a timely debate that intentionally, it seems, mirrors real life about acceptance of others or reluctance to integrate new people. At times, decisions made leave me wondering if Maggie failed to learn anything from everything she’s been through. As for Negan, it appears he will never grow out of his hardened, immature, narcissistic façade, and we sort of love him for that.
With the season delving more into humor than the first two, we see a lighter side of both Negan and Maggie this time around. Dare I say it might be the first time I’ve seen Maggie laugh since before her father and sister died.
Most notably, this is a season of growth, slapping the book closed on two characters who have been at odds since a pregnant Maggie kneeled before Negan and watched him brutally kill her husband. There are a few surprises you won’t see coming: the alternate reality episode was previously confirmed, and if you do some digging, you’ll see who may be returning for it.
While the storyline in the season, previewed in the action-packed trailer, takes some odd turns in the latter half, Season 3 is a much better send-off if this is the end (there’s no renewal announcement yet at the time of this writing). It’s a far superior story than the one in Season 2, reminiscent of the early days of The Walking Dead that made that concept so exciting in the first place.
I came out of this season realizing that though Negan will always be Negan, maybe that’s not so bad. I’m also reminded that Maggie has always been one of the strongest leaders of the franchise. That reality was easy to forget as she lost herself in grief and a desperate obsession for revenge. This season, you remember why she has survived so long and who she was before she lost her focus.
The shift from dark to humorous, the surprise elements, compelling new characters, and welcome character arcs come together to deliver a solid season that’s about burying the hatchet, moving on, and figuring out the best way to rebuild a society worth living in. In one scene, Negan tells Maggie that they might have been friends in another life. That vision couldn’t be farther from my imagination any other time, but after this season, I could see it.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
