Stupid me thinking that this episode would tie into the Commonwealth storyline and be good overall. If it wasn’t for me writing these reviews and previews for the new Walking Dead episodes every week, I would just skip next week’s episode. I am sick and tired of just watching “filler” and “bottle” episodes the past 4 weeks. The new Walking Dead episode, “Splinter” was not good and not lived up to my hype at all. The episode picked up with the season 10 finale with Eugene, Ezekiel, Yumiko, and Princess getting surrounded by the Commonwealth “Storm Troopers.” This episode could have been axed completely since the ending of the episode is the same as how it started with, getting surrounded by the “Storm Troopers.” This review is going to be short and sweet to the point because not a lot happened and this episode should have been like 10 minutes long…
Instead of breaking down scene by scene, we can break down the whole episode in 5 words, Princess held in a boxcar. She deals with the internal struggle of either escaping the boxcar or staying there until she can get help. She sees Eugene & Ezekiel but they were a figment of her imagination. They were never there to begin with. Eugene tells her to stay put in the boxcar to not cause anymore trouble but Ezekiel tells her to escape and to find the others to get out of there. The whole episode is will she escape, or will she wait in the boxcar. At the end of the episode you find her getting dragged out by a Commonwealth “Storm Trooper” with her, again, held captive, with the other three also held captive, and bags around their faces.
Although this episode is almost completely unnecessary, the viewer learns two things. The first thing is the “Storm Troopers” are apart of a bigger community. You find this out by Princess’ integration with them and when she beat up one of them in her boxcar. He says, “this is only standard protocol to see if you are worthy coming back with us.” This definitely ties into season 11 with the Commonwealth story line and will be important for the whole season. The second thing is Princess’ backstory. You find out why the episode is called “Splinter.” This is because of Princess’ backstory of her getting abused by her step dad (and kind of her mom) by her dad slapping Princess in the face and making her go to the garage to eat dinner. I was right on the cities thing where she says cities to calm her down in stressful situations. She tells Yumiko (also in her imagination) her whole backstory and gets a splinter in the process. However, by the end of the episode her splinter comes out. Her backstory is also shown when she beats up the “Storm Trooper.” She beats him up because he first slaps her in the face and this is reminded of herself as a kid so Princess goes off. She doesn’t know her own strength and almost kills him, but luckily stops herself before she beats him to death.
This whole episode was mainly featured by Princess. She is an interesting character on screen and I hope all of her comic story will be adapted to the screen perfectly as possible. I like the actress that plays her (Paola Lázaro). I think she is really funny, charismatic, and works with the group really well. With all that being said, I give The Walking Dead’s season 10 episode 20, “Splinter” a 0.5 out of 5 stars. The only saving grace of this episode is learning that the “Storm Troopers” is apart of the Commonwealth and Princess’ backstory. You could have given me this episode in 10 minutes and saved me the trouble of watching the whole 45 minutes against my will. Only two more episodes left in this “mini season.” I really really really hope that the Negan backstory episode is worth the wait because right now it could not come at a better time by saving all the viewers of the terrible season 10C so far. It better not flop like the rest of the episodes because then the whole season 10C will be a complete failure and have competition between season 2 of the worst season ever…