The Walking Dead – Hunted review S11 E3

September 6, 2021 Jeffrey Lyles 0 Comments Angel Theory, Cailey Fleming, Callan McAuliffe, Christian Serratos, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kien Michael Spiller, Lauren Cohan, Melissa McBride, Nadia Hilker, Seth Gilliam, The Walking Dead

Hopefully Negan isn’t the kind of guy to say I told you so, because Hunted would be a prime example of Negan being 100% dead right.

This was a complicated episode as it featured some strong moments — not shockingly from Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan — as well as a little frustration from the execution of this latest salvo from the Reapers.

Things pick right up from last episode with the Reapers tossing axes, knives and whatever else is in range at Maggie, Daryl, Negan and crew. Clearly the Reapers were big axe throwers before everything went to the walkers as they have a pretty impressive hit rate.

That’s not so good for Maggie’s crew, who might as well be wearing neon bullseyes in the night. This was an exhilarating opening sequence and felt like the start of a very memorable episode until the shift back to Hilltop. Carol is a rounding up a posse to go horse wrangling. Hopefully everyone had their Lee jeans for the occasion.

In the first two episodes there were two featured storylines — Maggie and company on a hunt for supplies and Eugene’s crew at the Commonwealth. Switching between the desperate Maggie subplot in the Metro tunnels while Eugene blubbered on about his vaccination dates and virginity status was an interesting approach that worked better than expected. This week wasn’t nearly as effective.

If there was an episode that just needed to focus on the survive until daylight nature of this attack, it was this one. Given the long, dragged out pacing of some other episodes, devoting an entire hour to Maggie’s crew trying to escape these nut jobs in masks seemed perfectly justified.

Instead, the whole desperate flight through the night gets skipped and Maggie is still evading her Reaper pursuer during daytime hours. Well, as Newt warned, “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”

Skipping the night flight felt like a real cheat for a potentially very suspenseful layout. And given how formidable the Reapers were in the opening salvo that’s asking viewers to significantly fill in the blanks figuring out how they escaped.

Did this episode feel like it had 710 commercials to anyone else? It barely felt like Hunted could string together five minutes before another onslaught of commercials.

Maggie makes it to a mall where she finds Alden… and some Reapers, who literally move as quietly as horror movie killers. Negan saves her, but Alden got sliced up pretty good.

Negan again asks about the plan. Maybe that’s a source of frustration for Maggie, but Negan’s question is still valid. And with the hope for the best rough outline Maggie has, that’s not very encouraging.

They do find Agatha and Duncan, who’s bleeding out. Duncan seemed like he could have been a player this season, but he’s already done. This is only acceptable if Marcus Lewis asked for Duncan to get killed off so he could take part in the Bitter Root movie.

Lugging Alden around allows a crowd of walkers to surround them in the forest and Agatha gets bit. That looks like the entirety of Maggie’s crew is now dead. #NeganWasRight. In fairness, that was on Agatha. Why are people in The Walking Dead still using knives to kill walkers instead of raiding every sword shop in town or making sturdy spears. Long distance is always the way to go people.

Hey look, Callan McAuliffe is appearing on Talking Dead tonight. That definitely bodes well for Alden making it through the end of this episode.

Gabriel is out alone in the woods too. He took a shiv through the hand, but know he’s going after the Reaper that got him. He asks Gabriel to pray for him, but Gabriel has no time for prayers or mercy.

Carol’s horse wrangling posse of Rosita, Kelly and Magna find one devoured horse, but manage to corral some more and safely return them back to Alexandria.

Back home, Carol has the rough detail of killing one of the horses so the residents can eat. Looks like horse is back on the menu boys. It was cool to see young Herschel (Kien Michael Spiller) explaining to Judith, RJ and Gracie about survivalist life on the road.

A spin-off featuring the kids of the old school Walking Dead crew led by Herschel, Judith and RJ probably would have lasted much longer than The Walking Dead: World Beyond.

Maggie and Negan find a barely held together church to stash Alden in before hitting the road. Maggie still blames Negan for destroying everything they built. Technically that was Rick, Glenn, Michonne, Abraham, et. al Maggie for going around and declaring war on the Saviors by killing “Negan.” But why get technical?

The odds of Alden still being alive when they get back isn’t great.

Hunted missed out its most captivating escape scenario, but Maggie gradually losing all of her allies besides Negan made for some compelling TV.