Emotional Contraband
This week’s episode of The Walking Dead, titled “Contrabando,” trafficked in smuggled hearts, buried guilt, and emotional debts long overdue. Thematically, it leaned into “Love’s Lost and Found,” with Justina locked away like forgotten cargo and Roberto hidden like a secret too fragile to name. At the episode’s conclusion, Carol isn’t Roberto’s mule. She’s the one smuggling hope out of enemy territory while the rest of the town trades in silence and self-preservation.
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| “Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Eduardo Noriega as Antonio. Photo Credit: Carla Oset/AMC@2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Loves Found, Loves Lost, and Loves That Should’ve Stayed Hidden
This season’s emotional contraband—love found, love lost—was on full display. Justina and Roberto, Antonio and Carol offered tender but tentative connections, while Daryl & Isabelle, Paz & Elena, Fede & Maria, and Antonio & Maria carried the heavier losses. The quiet exchange between Paz and Daryl about lost love was one of the few moments that landed with emotional clarity. When Paz says, “If you don’t give up, you don’t have to accept it,” Daryl replies, “I lost a lot of people,” and Paz finishes the thought: “But not all hurt the same.” It’s a rare flash of emotional precision—brief, grounded, and deeply felt. The kind of writing the rest of the episode could’ve used more of.
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| “Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Alexandra Masangkay as Paz. Photo Credit: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Meanwhile, the Antonio–Fede–Maria triangle unraveled with all the drama of a soggy envelope. Maria’s death during a documentary shoot? That’s the twist? No affair, no secret paternity—just Antonio’s cinephilia gone tragically wrong. Fede’s attempted revenge-by-poisoning of Roberto felt like a theatrical overreaction to a decades-old guilt trip. Roberto’s emotional spiral over the anticlimactic reveal of his mother’s death was outsized and underwritten. It was the kind of truth that arrives sealed, not delivered. It was another emotional shipment left in storage.
Contraband and Contrivance
This week’s logistics leaned less on post-apocalyptic realism and more on narrative improv. Fede inexplicably allows Paz to leave Solaz del Mar with a war chest—vehicle, fuel, guns, ammo. The refugee community in Barcelona, supposedly surviving by “keeping a low profile,” suddenly mobilizes like a militia, swayed by Daryl’s one-liner logic: “Kill the future king, kill la ofrenda,” as if slogans now substitute for strategy.
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“Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Alexandra Masangkay as Paz. Photo Credit: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All |
El Alcazar’s ambush? Classic Walking Dead chaos, but the stakes felt manufactured. Last week, Daryl had one gun and four bullets. This week, he’s packing infinite ammo. He tried keys, a screwdriver, even a gun on Justina’s cage—and still, nothing. In this instance, the showrunner has allowed tension to trump serviceable tools—because nothing says “high stakes” like a rusty old cage that resists logic for one more beat of suspense.
Fede catches Carol and Antonio’s lies. He clocks their manipulation yet still lets Carol drive out of Solaz del Mar like it’s a courtesy exit. Efficiency, it seems, is also contraband.
Dialogue That Emotionally Flatlines
Carol’s Spanish phrasebook subplot—meant to aid the slow burn of her romance with Antonio—was a misfire. The show framed her language learning as a flirtatious side quest, but when it came time to use Spanish in a meaningful way to communicate with Fede’s mom, it offered nothing. No useful phrases, no earned rapport. So, when Fede’s mom handed over the medicine to save Roberto, the moment felt smuggled in from the script’s first draft—all packaging, no payload. Contraband without consequence.
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| “Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier, Eduardo Noriega as Antonio. Photo Credit: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Missed Payoffs
The biggest letdown? Justina wasn’t rescued. After all that buildup, the episode needed a cathartic release—something to crack open the emotional crates it’s been hauling all season. Instead, we got loose threads and flashbacks to Daryl’s childhood that felt more like filler than foundation.
Antonio’s public reckoning—calling out Fede for cheating at la ofrenda, banishing Justina, and poisoning Roberto—was bold, but baffling. Why did it work? Why did Carol get away? And why is this town so casually generous with vehicles, fuel, and second chances?
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| Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Eduardo Noriega as Antonio, Hugo Arbués as Roberto. Photo Credit: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
“Contrabando” had the bones of a compelling episode: emotional stakes, thematic resonance, and a proper ambush. But the connective tissue was flimsy. The writing wobbled, the logic leaked, and the emotional payoffs stayed sealed. Still, those quiet moments between Paz and Daryl reminded us why we’re still here—not for the spectacle, but for the scars.
Let’s face it, the show’s been trafficking in emotional contraband all season. Now’s the time to open the last crate, light the fuse, and let the fallout mean something. As we approach the season finale: Which relationship—found or lost—has lingered with you the longest? And is Daryl becoming a new kind of leader, or just a passenger in someone else’s convoy? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Lynette JonesOverall Rating: 5/10