The Walking Dead has officially returned to your television screens. However, it won’t be around for long because the series finale is set to air on November 20th (November 13th on AMC +). Personally, at times, I thought this episode was slow, although it did had its moments. I give episode 17, “Lockdown” a 3 out of 5 stars. Any scene with Daryl, Maggie, Aaron, and Gabriel fighting Lance was must watch. Daryl and Maggie also dropped a Glenn bomb on us when they were talking about Leah’s death in the last episode, which was nice to see. The opening scene with Judith narrating her thoughts with the accompanying Walking Dead scenes from previous seasons also was a pleasant surprise and had tons of flashback nostalgia. However, I could have gone less with the riots inside the community because of Sebastian Milton’s actions and the resulting newspaper article that was released because of it. I get why AMC chose to show those scenes of the protests because the community is in the process of revolting against the current leadership, but one or two scenes would have been enough to get the point across.
Lance is Captured
Lance Hornsby might be one of the best Walking Dead villains we have ever scene. No, not because of the destruction that he causes (we had Negan and the Governor for that). It is because of his charisma on screen with the rest of the cast and because he has that huge Commonwealth army at his disposal. He currently is second in command to the Commonwealth but his loyalty to Pamela has disappeared. He does his stuff his way and no one is going to stop until he gets what he wants. However, after countless battles between Daryl and Lance, Lance is captured by the group and is held at knife point by Daryl. Lance is too important to die at this point but I wonder when the right time is to kill him off, if there is a point. As I said in my death predictions for part 3, either Pamela or Lance are going to die, but there is a question if both of them needs to die. Having Lance captured by either Daryl or the Commonwealth is going to be a good thing but Lance always has people on the inside to help him out. You could see that with Shira and Roman (people working for Lance) hunting down the kids to get Daryl to stop hunting down Lance and to submit to his way of doing things.
Negan Enters The Commonwealth
Daryl has to think of a plan to rescue the rest of the group inside the Commonwealth and to tell them what is happening with Lance. Daryl comes up with sending Negan inside the walls because no one has ever seen him before. Although Daryl still has his doubts about working so close to Negan, it has to be done for the safety of everyone else in the group. Negan goes inside of the Commonwealth, meets Mercer, and talks to Jerry where Carol is. He eventually finds Carol and they develop a plan to help out Sebastian by finding him and giving him back to his mother. Before they go to Sebastian, Negan opens up to Carol by saying how appreciative he is for her to take a chance on her and by doing so, getting “accepted” into the group after he killed Alpha. He also opens up to her by talking about his wife, Annie, and their kid on the way. They eventually find him and begin to return him back to Pamela. Negan gives the fans so many perfect one liners in this episode, to add to his on going list of one liners in the show and cerements why he is the second best character in this show and his redemption arc was the one of the best. One example is when he was talking with Sebastian and Sebastian says, “Do you know who I am?” and Negan responds with, “No Junior, do YOU know who I am?” After Negan and Carol give Sebastian back to Pamela, she hugs him, but quickly turns on a switch and slaps him. She thinks that Sebastian messed up the whole Milton legacy inside the Commonwealth and is the reason why she is hated within the community. Negan exits the community and returns back to Daryl to help him capture Lance. I am excited to see what Negan has in store for the final part and what leads him to leave to New York with Maggie for his spinoff show. If I had to guess right now, either Annie has complications with the baby developing or Annie dies in child birth and the baby needs special medicine in order to survives and Negan has to go find these pills in a far away location.