“If historical past had been a conflagration,” then The Strolling Lifeless: Lifeless Metropolis’s finale is the place the flames lastly lick the fault strains of id, to not reveal redemption, however repetition. Although the forager parable and voiceovers gesture towards chance—Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Armstrong (Gaius Charles), and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) poised at some mythic fork within the highway—it’s the Dama’s caustic perception that provides the sport away. Maggie isn’t stepping ahead. She’s caught in a loop. And the present, regardless of its finest Jedi thoughts tips, is aware of it too.
Maybe the episode’s sharpest emblem of this cyclical stasis is Maggie stabbing Negan within the again. It’s not simply her tactical betrayal; her act is steeped in symbolic weight, particularly in opposition to their historical past of reluctant cooperation.
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| “If Historical past Have been a Conflagration” – THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Pictured: Lauren Cohan as Maggie Rhee, Lisa Emery as The Dama. Picture: Robert Clark/AMC© 2025 AMC Networks Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Throughout The Strolling Lifeless and Lifeless Metropolis, Maggie and Negan have shared a risky rhythm: moments of uneasy alliance shadowed by unresolved grief. Maggie by no means actually forgave Negan for killing Glenn—she tolerated him when survival demanded it. However that tolerance was a efficiency. Beneath it, her anger remained incandescent. So, if historical past had been a conflagration—not simply hearth, however uncontained destruction, a blazing inheritance of unresolved hurt—then Maggie is historical past.
She’s a dwelling flame in a world glowing with white-hot depth even in stillness. She carries the embers of historic injustice in a means totally distinct from the way in which Negan compelled Bruegel to hold embers. Her emotional terrain isn’t separate from historical past—it’s historical past. A private manifestation of collective hearth, formed by burn marks, ash, and smoke that also clings to pores and skin.
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| “If Historical past Have been a Conflagration” – THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Pictured: Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan. Picture: Robert Clark/AMC © 2025 AMC Networks Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
So, when she stabs him—actually—it’s not private vengeance. It’s an indictment of what their complete relationship has been: a chilly alliance constructed on utility, not therapeutic. Sadly, the act bypasses dialogue and sidesteps significant decision. It declares even in cooperation, ‘I by no means trusted you.’ And that’s the heartbreak. Each second of Maggie and Negan’s shared survival wasn’t reconciliation, however a brittle détente.
It additionally underscores one other loop the present likes to discover: historical past repeating via cycles of violence, even among the many reformed. Negan as soon as bludgeoned the longer term Maggie noticed with Glenn and Hershel. On this episode, she makes an attempt to kill the person Negan tried to turn out to be.
It’s cyclical. Tragic. And pointedly intentional.
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| “If Historical past Have been a Conflagration” – THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Pictured: Kim Coates as The Bruegel. Picture: Robert Clark/AMC© 2025 AMC Networks Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Early on, Bruegel’s (Kim Coates) monologue about weapons because the everlasting forex of energy positions this world as one which refuses change. His glee isn’t simply sadistic—it’s prophetic. The Dama and the Burazi, New Babylon, and Bruegel’s gang don’t innovate. They kill to reclaim the previous and protect its ashes. Civilization, right here, is a closed circuit of violence dressed up in ritual.
Trauma is caught in that circuit, too.
Contemplate the haunting distinction between RJ Grimes and Hershel Rhee (Logan Kim)—two sons of the apocalypse. Although successfully orphaned, RJ is raised inside a mythic framework. The tales Judith tells him about ‘The Courageous Man’, the Alexandria neighborhood, and their dad and mom’ hope for the longer term, turn out to be his ethical structure. These aren’t survival ways—they’re values embedded in narrative.
Hershel, in contrast, is raised not with fantasy, however mourning. Maggie’s grief renders her current however emotionally unreachable. Comprehensible, sure. Tragic, undeniably. And in that absence of inherited which means, Hershel assembles a self out of sharp fragments: suspicion, resentment, defiance. Glenn’s son in physique, however not in spirit. And so, he’s legible—even sympathetic—but tough to love.
He hasn’t been taught the language of affection. He speaks bitterness as an alternative. For instance, he may’ve punched Maggie and it could’ve damage lower than when he spat: “You’ve obtained all of it discovered since you did it so F**ing completely for your self.”
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| “If Historical past Have been a Conflagration” – THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Pictured: Logan Kim as Hershel. Picture: Robert Clark/AMC© 2025 AMC Networks Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
One of many episode’s most stirring moments occurs earlier than the opening credit, earlier than a single phrase is spoken. A drone glides silently over a decaying skyline. Then, in stillness, the digicam rests on every of the primary solid’s faces. Issues are nonetheless and reverent. Greater than ambiance, it alerts we’re witnessing stasis, not motion. Not crossroads, however cycles. That is trauma calcified into structure: isolation as inheritance. Motion arrested.
But in that stillness, one thing aches to shift.
Maggie handing Negan the knife to finish Ginny’s struggling isn’t forgiveness. However it’s recognition. Armstrong’s silence shifts from dutiful to contemplative. Even Negan, bloodied and hollowed, radiates a bruised readability. On the finish of the episode, the voiceovers whisper of ahead movement, however the finale’s actual energy is in its hesitation—a breath held earlier than anybody dares to interrupt the loop.
So why preserve watching?
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| “If Historical past Have been a Conflagration” – THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Pictured: Gaius Charles as Armstrong. Picture: Robert Clark/AMC © 2025 AMC Networks Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
As a result of Season 2 doesn’t resolve, it unsettles. It peels again the noise to disclose the deeper query beneath all this loss of life and mythmaking: Can a future be born if nobody remembers communicate it?
If Season 3 dares to reply—not with one other showdown, however with a narrative value passing down—then maybe Maggie, as Hershel’s daughter and keeper of the religion, may lastly step via the veil. In doing so, she may reclaim Glenn’s legacy of affection and goodness and information her son again. Solely then may one thing lastly burn clear.
By all appearances, Season 2 was supposed to be a fork within the highway. In reality, it spun viewers around the loop as soon as extra. That stated, will you be coming again for Season 3? In that case, why? Let me know within the feedback.
Total grade:
9/10
Lynette Jones