The Walking Dead: Swear review Season 7, Episode 7
After the crushing onslaught of the Saviors rampage, Swear marked a welcome reprieve for The Walking Dead featuring an unlikely player.
Tara has surprisingly become one of the longer tenured non-original cast member. Tara evolved from one of The Governor’s lackeys to a character so irrelevant she’s become endearing. Tara is a rare character in that she’d need more screen time to make her inevitable death more meaningful, which is warranted due to her stint on the series at this point.
Swear caught up with Tara and Heath following the raid on The Saviors’ outpost. Remember that feel bad moment when it seemed like Rick and company took a seriously aggressive approach in dealing with a problem that kicked off all this season’s craziness? Those were the days.
Heath erroneously thinks he still has some moral high ground as he lays into Tara for screwing up Alexandria. OK, on that front he’s got a point, but it was just a matter of time before Alexandria was going to get overrun by someone. With Corey Hawkins starring in 24: Legacy, Heath’s probably not long for the show, but I appreciated the episode leaving his fate up in the air allowing for his return at some point in the future.
[irp]
Scavenging has always made the characters do stupid things, but it’s hard to fault Tara for figuring snagging a bag would unleash the walker salt pile trap. That made for a pretty cool visual even if Heath and Tara came off real idiotic for trying to fight the walker horde instead of retreating or leaping off the bridge.
Tara still managed to take a dive and land in Oceanside, a community comprised solely of women. Cyndie (Sydney Park), one of the community’s younger residents, broke ranks to help Tara out. I’m glad Swear didn’t play the scenario of the show’s resident lesbian landing in a community of women up for laughs. Although it was somewhat disappointing the show didn’t seize the moment and place Heath in this setting as a Y: The Last Man homage.
At this point it’s pretty astonishing that Alexandria managed to evade The Saviors for so long. Oceanside wasn’t the original home of this community, but after The Saviors killed all the men and boys over 10, the survivors got out of dodge. Their new strategy of shooting strangers on sight seemed like a sensible one.
Tara’s proposal to strike a community alliance made a lot of sense. When battling Negan and The Saviors the more the merrier so it was weird when Tara flaked out and ran off. Cyndie came through on yet another assist and then as a sniper to help Tara get through the salt walkers.
It’d been so long since Tara’s been gone it was weird hearing her mention looking forward to getting back to the long dead Denise. Despite her promise, hopefully Tara does mention Oceanside as another potential ally in The Saviors War. Rosita, Carl and Michonne could use all the allies they can get.
Swear was an interesting detour that didn’t really progress the main story forward. It’s about time to check back in on Carol and Morgan with their exploits at The Kingdom as well as Rick waking up from his funk. If nothing else, Swear gave Tara an overdue showcase that she carried well enough in a solid albeit non-essential episode in Season 7.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC