I think I know who Negan picked up. That one woman who survived Dwight's betrayal. Which means that it won't just be Dollar Store Jack Elam who finds himself in trouble when he returns to the Sanctuary.
It seems a bit strange that she disappeared for the entire period since Negan's attack on Alexandria, though. I mean, where's she been.. on vacation?
It was either Laura (i.e. blond chick that knows Dwight betrayed everyone) or Gregory. I thought the interactions between Negan and Jadis were pretty good and brought some humanity to an otherwise filler filled episode. Nothing really happened...
This was one of the better episodes of this season. At the same time, regardless of how good the season finale is or isn't, this will certainly become the worst season to date imho. I initially thought that Negan sparing Simon (even though I knew he would kill him later on) was bullshit, another unnecessary risk by a leader who has taken too many of them to still be realistically in charge. I suppose the notion that he did so to find out who among his soldiers were still loyal to him is a worthwhile explanation. But the Dwight thing is just stupid. He is going to keep a guy around who has betrayed him over and over again and who obviously wants to kill him, just so he can torment him some more? The subplot of Aaron trying to convince the community of women to risk their lives for Rick's group is stupid. They are relatively safe in an area that is able to sustain them, why should they leave it just to get some of their people killed in an all-out war with the Saviors?
AMEN. finally someone says it. The women don't need to fight a pointless war against the Saviors all for Rick's benefit.
Your initial thinking was spot on. As for his 'plan' of using the guy to figure out who might turn on him, that's all well and good unless someone casually walks into his office and puts a bullet in his brain. Also, it's not like the sanctuary is a vast estate from what we've seen. When he's outside talking to Dwight, how does he know that Simon, or one his Simon's sidekicks, is not going to come out of the door at some point and SEE them? Re. Eugene, why not attack it with half a dozen people, grab Eugene... or anyone else for that matter. THEN just take him a short distance and threaten to kill them if they didn't tell them how many people were in the ammo outpost, tie them up and go back and take them out. Grab the ammo, depriving Negan of it AND making it available for defence or an assault on the sanctuary.
How many people live in the Sanctuary? How many men at arms? How many workers? Because we have seen Rick and his Gang kill like 80 folks in the past 2 seasons that "were all Negan". And yet somehow Negan still feels he has more than enough to win this war. I highly doubt Negan had originally like 300 or so people to dominate the region. And man the outposts. I get that he's a tough foe, but come on...
Probably one of the best episodes of the season. If you subtract the Aaron and the women from Oceanside scenes it ranks in the top 10. I felt the time with Eugene was kind of a waste, too. For a secondary character, Gregory gets some pretty good moments. Who has guesses for the season finale? Mine are: Eugene switches sides and becomes a last-minute hero by either sending the ammunition to Rick's group or providing a bad set of bullets to the saviors (the gun to preacher's head). Too much time is spent on Oceanside, but they magically appear to help in the final fight. If Negan dies, it is after Rick spares him and at Morgan's hand.
It's a lot more than 80 by this point. Remember that Negan talked of Rick & co killing like fifty of his guys by the time we got to the point where he killed Glenn and Abraham with Lucille. Between Alexandria, the Hilltop and the Kingdom, the good guys (if you can still deem them as such) must have killed well over 100 of the Saviors. So yeah, his seemingly unlimited supply of soldiers is more than a bit fishy. Especially since at this point, he would have to deal with stuff like desertion too. It's not like things have been hunky-dory at the Sanctuary.
Aaron: "Come help us fight Negan! Otherwise I'll keep on being a slight nuisance on the edge of your settlement until you change your mind!" Oceanside ladies: "Would we rather spend our days scissoring and fishing or instead die fighting a crazy person who has anthropomorphized a barbed-wired baseball bat?"
Antrowhatnow? Also there are a hell of a lot of zombies just outside their camp, would they not have cleared them by now?
This applies to every single settlement. Frankly with the rate of attrition, there barely should be any Walkers left by this point.
^^^^^^This. I get that we need Negan as an all-powerful behemoth to present a worthy challenge to Rick and the Gang, but just ridiculous how it's portrayed on screen. Like Simon's invasion in which his forces somehow escaped being fired directly on by Maggie and her troops.
Well, that's why I say someone would have just shot him in the back, LONG before that point. When people start dying all around just coz the guy's got a hard-on to finish Rick, would YOU hang around? Even if you didn't kill him to stay I'd say, 'screw this... I'm off'. If you've got a car and some weapons and ammo, just leave
Easy to see this a mile down the track. The Oceanside women arrive at the last minute to save the day. Otherwise, why waste airtime on that sub-plot?
I don't think Oceanside saves the day but they will likely play a role that allows the final showdown between Rick and Negan. Also agree that walkers are too convenient. The small numbers would be dead or have formed up with "herds" by now - but we need a quick plot device so oh no walkers tumbling down a hill or rising from a swamp.
It's also about numbers. The largest amount of new Walkers would have been created at the peak of the pathogen's rise. Since then, the survivors have killed a lot of them and there is a limited supply to create new ones (basically surviving humans). So with each passing year, there should be less and less walkers. We haven't really seen that on the show.
It's not like they're breeding, is it and they have sense of a plan so why wouldn't they simply stay in the cities and just rot away over a few years. The numbers around in the countryside, (where most of the action places place), would probably be relatively small. Certainly, over a year or so you'd simply run out. It's not like any OTHER form of 'predator', (wolves or wild dogs or whatever). So there's no hunting instinct and they can't breed. Someone linked to that picture of a wolf pack travelling through the snow a while back on another thread. I mean, those things are organised. Edit: I found it... but it turns out it was inaccurate... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wolf-pack-photo/ But what that DOES show is that it's highly structured and organised. Certainly compared to a bunch of zombies there's no comparison!!!
Well they can sort of breed, by turning humans, but that is an ever dwindling supply. At this point, the large majority of humans would already have been turned so with no steady supply of new Walkers and with the surviving humans taking them out steadily (as well as some of them just being taken out naturally by the environment and animals) they would become an ever decreasing nuisance. The Walkers as they are conceived within "The Walking Death" aren't meant to last very long.