Lance is tired of waiting.
The problem withThe Walking Deadseason 11’s mid-season finale (second mid-season finale?
This used to be a drama where anything could happen.
Commonwealth soldiers on ‘The Walking Dead’.Jace Downs/AMC
Main characters could be killed off any time, any place.
Cataclysmic events or formidable foes would emerge.
Each shift would fundamentally alter the survivors in some way.
It’s unclear how the Commonwealth is doing that, if at all.
It’s as if the Alexandrians are changing the Commonwealth instead of the other way around.
But so far it’s all playing out rather predictably.
But then you rememberLauren Cohanis getting her ownWalking Deadseries withJeffrey Dean Morganand the tension instantly dissolves.
Even if Cohan didn’t have thatspin-off, however, she wasn’t going to be killed.
There was a sense that this tussle was just for show.
Something happened earlier inThe Walking Dead’s tenure when suddenly those main characters stopped being killed.
Maybe some of the actors got too popular.
Who knows what the real reason was?
It always ends how you expect it.
Then, sure enough, Leah is shot and killed before she does Maggie in.
By Daryl of all people.
Now, here was a moment that felt rather pivotal.
Does he choose his love or does he choose his family?
He chose his family, clearly, but was any of that conflict explored?
He just plants a bullet in Leah’s skull and then he hustles out of there with Maggie.
Which brings me to another quandary.
Does any of this really matter?
What is the end game here?
How does all of this change the characters for the next stage of their stories?
The only real character shift we get this episode is that Maggie is now warming up to Negan.
She says he protected Herschel back at the apartment complex, and she’ll never forget that.
Lance ends up taking matters into his own hands when he finds Leah slain on a cabin floor.
He commands his forces to take over Alexandria, Hilltop, and Oceanside.
We barely saw him flip a coin as part of his schtick to begin with.
And even with these new moves, we can probably predict where this is all going.
There are eight more episodes to go in the final season, and supposedly anything could happen.
I just don’t necessarily believe it.
