No time like the zombie apocalypse to build a family.
After last week's extended look into Morgan's past, The Walking Dead returned to an Alexandria in upheaval after the brutal attack sustained from the Wolves and dropped one heck of a bomb on us: Maggie is pregnant, y'all.
Fans of the comic book series the AMC hit is based on have been waiting for this development to make its way to the screen for a while, though it played out a bit differently than it does in the source material. (In the comics, Denise, Alexandria's new doctor, lets the couple know they're expecting.) Instead, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) first breaks the news to Aaron (Ross Marquand) after an attempt to rescue an M.I.A. Glenn (Steven Yeun) suffers from a failure to launch. (Hard to get beyond Alexandria's walls with walkers surrounding the place.)
It's a touching moment when Maggie finally breaks down with Aaron and shares her secret, creating a connection between two characters that hadn't been explored yet. It also feels like more proof that when we haven't seen the last of Glenn. We've already laid out plenty of evidence arguing why we believe he'll make it out from that walker huddle alive, regardless how hard it feels like the show is trolling us (Seriously with the removal of Yeun's name from the credits, AMC?), but this new development has us thinking the show is building to the big Glenn moment from the comic books that a pregnant Maggie is very much a part of. We won't spoil it for you here, but if you really want to know: Be our guests.
Beyond Maggie's big reveal, our first trip back to Alexandria on what's amounting to the worst day in their lives—seriously, everything that's happened in season six, so far, has happened in the span of one afternoon—felt more like table-setting than anything else. Dr. Denise (Merritt Wever) proved us wrong and kissed Tara after having a doctoring breakthrough. Carl (Chandler Riggs) and Ron (Austin Abrams) have the lamest fight over Enid. (Anyone else think Ron looks just like the live-action version Jimmy Jr. from Bob's Burgers?) Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge) finally make some time for a little smoochin' of their own in her garage. Oh, and Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) loses her ever-loving mind.
From her terror-stricken stupor at the beginning of the episode, to her furious city planning, to repeatedly stabbing a walker in the chest until she looked like Carrie at the prom, the hour delivered Deanna's deep unraveling. "What I wanted for this place, was that really just pie in the sky?" she asks Rick while bathed in walker blood. Rick replied no because, well, when someone on their last nerve is standing in front of you, covered in the blood of the zombie they've just killed, you tell them what they want to hear.
But it was clear in those final moments, when she walked to the fence and antagonized those walkers, that all is not right in her head. And if that growing crack in the wall that Deanna obliviously walks by in those final seconds is any indication, all will once again not be right in Alexandria very soon.
Spare Parts:
- "Either way, the wall's gonna hold together. Can you?" Ah, the foreshadowing. Thanks for jinxing the wall, Rick!
- The Alexandrians really are the worst, aren't they? Listening to their lame justification for looting the food storage was so, so frustrating.
- If you were wondering what Deanna wrote in Latin on those planning documents, it was, "Dolor hic tibi proderit olim," which comes from Roman poet Ovid and translates to "Someday this pain will be useful to you." Pretty on the nose, TWD writers.
- Aaron's pitch for Maggie to name her baby after him was adorable, right? Right.
- Where was Carol?!
What did you think of the episode, TWD fans? Still holding out hope for Glenn's survival?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.