The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 17 Review: “Lockdown” The Beginning Of The End
Cast: Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Lauren Cohan, Khary Payton, Ross Marquand
Director: Greg Nicotero
Streaming Platform: AMC
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The Walking Dead is back, but it will be the last time you will hear it, because the AMC show that for eleven seasons has made fans happy, losing a good part of it along the way due to a narrative not always interested in exploring the world post-apocalyptic of Daryl and his companions with cohesion and coherence, has reached the third and last block, effectively starting the countdown that will lead us to the final series. The universe of The Walking Dead will not end with the mother series, this is well known, between film and serial projects, spin-offs and other drifts that will explore different realities of this world dominated by the undead.
After twelve years, we have arrived at the beginning of the end of the line: with this seventeenth episode of the eleventh season, of which we speak in our review of The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 17, the (too) long-lived flagship series of the AMC is preparing to definitively end. The merit is also of a final midseason (the second) that was not incisive as it should have been, in the arrhythmia of a dramaturgy that has conditioned the show, especially in this long final season. As expected, the effects of this modus operandi inevitably also reflect on the episode under analysis.
The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 17 Review: The Story Plot
The cracks begin to widen in the Commonwealth and the population rebels after the publication of the article that revealed the perverse game in the massacre of Sebastian, son of Pamela Milton, leader of a community that behind his utopian propaganda has never really hidden from the eyes of the spectators his dictatorial nature. An awareness that now seems to have reached even those who gather on the streets and that Milton tries to harangue from her ivory tower through a microphone. Contrasted to Hornsby who, after setting his hand on the outposts of our protagonists and having unsuccessfully hurled Leah against Maggie, finds himself involved in a manhunt to eliminate the threat that Daryl and his people represent to the Commonwealth.
But our forces are converging and taking sides to checkmate Queen Milton; so Lance and his remain entangled in an exhausting chase aimed at slowing them down and decimating them little by little. On the Commonwealth front, Jerry tries to rescue the children, pursued by the regime’s thugs, while Carol tries to recover Sebastian to deal with Pamela. Mercer and Rosita, meanwhile, whiz outside the walls to face a horde of the undead looming over the Commonwealth.
It was perhaps inevitable that the show would indulge in an episode called Lockdown, in the light of what has happened in the last two years. And here, then, the third and final tranche of the final season focuses mostly on what happens inside the Commonwealth, where everyone is stuck as Pamela Milton (verbally) and Lance Hornsby (by force) try to reassure citizens and contain the rebellion. The rebellion is consolidating as now the different factions are united and can plan together how to proceed against the tyranny disguised as a utopia devoted to the common good. Not that everyone is happy with this evolution: Negan, less and less willing to go back to old habits, openly affirms that perhaps he would have been better off staying for the facts of him in his house in the woods…
The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 17 Review and Analysis
Many things happen on the screen in this debut episode, although the main storylines are two, the one inside the Commonwealth and the confrontation between Daryl and Lance, the more TWD continues in the attempt to unmask Pamela Milton, the more the substrate of structural flaws of his government but, consequently, also of a script that has sensationally inserted as key figures of the Commonwealth perfect strangers ready to undermine its foundations (we want to talk about Connie investigative journalist or Yumiko right arm of Milton?). Because the inevitability of what is happening in the dystopia defended by men in white armor is now part of a script that The Walking Dead has written and rewritten several times without being able to add that extra something from time to time.
From the Governor to the Saviors, passing through the Whisperers and a succession of lesser enemies (with the great wasted opportunity of the Reapers to crown it all), the more time passed, the less memorable our feats became, with few exceptions. With a proven design of annihilation that requires the necessary sacrifice of someone among the “good ones”, Rick first and Daryl then faced every threat to the quiet life represented by the enemy factions without gaining much beyond survival itself and some addition to the group. A mechanism that has now reached yet another final clash and that can tickle the palate only for some flicker of action by the good Nicotero as director, who still fails to perfectly balance the registers, excelling above all in that gore of which he is the undisputed master, but which he relegates to some pawns among many without giving us the thrill or the emotion of a concrete risk for the protagonists.
Before Angela Kang took over from Scott M. Gimple (currently creative supervisor of the entire franchise) as showrunner, The Walking Dead had one problem above all, particularly glaring: a lopsided structure where character actions and narrative progression were subordinated to a handful of strong moments scattered in strategic points of the season (the premiere, the two episodes that marked the beginning and end of the midseason break, and the finale), with the effect of a soup so elongated that the times of the series were more dead of the walking corpses that periodically torment our heroes.
With the new management, we have returned to a more coherent and less discontinuous vision, raising the fate of the series just when behind the scenes we were considering whether to go on forever or not. Due to the pandemic, the final season has been extended by eight episodes compared to the norm, and with this extension, the old effect has returned: only now we have reached the real meat in the fire as regards the battle between our heroes and the Commonwealth, whose true intentions have inexplicably been treated as a mystery to justify the greater number of minutes available to close the parent series.
That the end is imminent is also signaled by the initial summary, which instead of summarizing the events of the last few months traces the entire history of the show, with the narrator of Judith Grimes who recalls how some fought for the good of all (Rick Grimes), while others have succumbed to the temptation of evil (Shane, the Governor, Alpha). A sort of In Memoriam for the characters who contributed to the show’s best moments, but also for the series itself that looks back one last time before plunging headlong into the brutal present. This, however, promises unprecedented violence later on and for the rest, net of some effective moments of tension due to the direction of the always reliable Greg Nicotero, he takes it easy as Gimple’s seasons used to do. And so, the wait becomes agonizing again, with the doubt that comes back: it will be a worthy ending, or after the first promising signs this final vintage will be perfectly average, giving reason to the many fans who have abandoned over the years. the ship?
The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 17 Review: The Last Words
The Walking Dead returns with a final installment of episodes. The debut brings together the pawns on the battlefield, inserting some important action ideas but favoring Nicotero’s mastery in the field of gore – a little less for the all-round director. Between some forcing too much (Carol’s dowsing talent in finding in no time what no one can find doesn’t even impress us anymore) and a structure that makes redundancy its flag, we approach the epilogue with a haunted retinal memory from Lance’s evil grin, always hoping for something more captivating for the Commonwealth and all of us. The first of The Walking Dead’s final eight episodes return to the bad habits of the show’s worst years, stretching the broth for a theoretically explosive finale in the weeks to come.
