The Walking Dead: Girl Power

First Aired November 27th, 2016.

Two girls, Rachel (played by Mimi Kirkland) and Cyndie (played by Sydney Park), are on a beach and stumble across an unconscious Tara (played by Alanna Masterson). Rachel wants to follow the “rules” and kill her, but Cyndie refuses and drags Tara to safety from the water.

Cyndie goes back and leaves supplies and a sharp stick for Tara, unaware that she wakes up and follows her. In a flashback, Heath (played by Corey Hawkins) vents to Tara that after weeks of scavenging they found only meager supplies, but she doesn’t want to give up. He also shares his worry about having killed so many Saviors and that the only way to survive now is to be selfish and kill, which Tara disagrees with. They come across the ruins of a survivor camp and are overrun by walkers and separated. In the present, Tara comes across a community full of heavily armed women and children, and once she’s discovered they open fire. Rachel corners Tara, but before she can shoot, Cyndie comes to Tara’s defense, and instead Tara is taken hostage. The leader Natania (played by Deborah May), Cyndie’s grandmother, questions Tara. But Tara lies and says she lived on a fishing boat. While they normally kill strangers, the fact that Tara spared one of them instead of shooting her has them questioning if they should release her.

Tara’s been absent for the entire season until now, so an entire episode featuring the character was inevitable, and, as it turned out, a great episode. Tara is often a source for good one-liners and has her moments, but usually fades into the background. This episode showed she can carry an entire episode herself and that there is much more to her character. Heath is an Alexandrian who’s been there but not really been involved. For a minute I had forgotten who he was when he appeared on screen. Having him get separated from Tara early in the episode was a good move, this was Tara’s episode and he wouldn’t have contributed much by being around. This community of all women living Amazon style is a first, as well as a major deviation from the comics, which didn’t have any groups like that. Ironically, this would be an ideal place for Tara if they hadn’t shot at her and held her hostage.

Natania invites Tara to dinner and tries to convince her to stay in order to keep their village safe and reveals they lost all the men in a fight with another group. After revealing they knew she was lying, Tara tells the truth about where she is from and their fight with the Saviors. She tries to convince Natania and the others that their two communities could work together, but is met with resistance as they are used to being independent. Natania decides to send Tara out with a guide to find Heath and investigate their community; Cyndie offers to go, but is forbidden. Tara heads out with her guide, but quickly realizes they plan to kill her and runs at the first chance she gets. Tara confronts her guide, who reveals Tara’s group only killed an outpost and that the Saviors were responsible for killing all their men and young boys. She plans to kill Tara to ensure the Saviors don’t find them, but Cyndie intervenes and helps Tara escape, but makes her promise to never return or tell anyone about them. Cyndie covers Tara as she runs through the horde of walkers on the bridge, but she finds no sign of Heath.

Cyndie didn’t really have to make Tara promise anything, there was no way she would ever go back to that place, in just one episode they turned on her and tried to kill her three times. Of course, given what they went through it’s understandable, but Tara had proved she was a good person. Although this was a fun episode, it was clearly filler and a way to give Tara’s character a major storyline after missing most of the season so far. Tying this community to the Saviors was a way of trying to bring them into the main conflict and be used as a way of revisiting them later in the season, although it doesn’t seem very likely to happen. However, there were a lot of characters introduced this episode that would be worth exploring later. Branching out and exploring new places is great, but why did these people also have to be connected to the Saviors? It seems their reach is never ending, and, at this point, we’re just being provided more examples of their brutality. They’re bad guys. We get it.

Tara continues alone on foot and eventually makes it back to Alexandria, where she learns her girlfriend Denise (played by Merritt Weaver) was killed weeks ago. But when pressed about places with guns or ammunition, Tara keeps the other community’s existence to herself. It was strange watching Tara absorb the news of Denise’s death, since, for us, it happened a year ago. Tara decided to keep quiet after everything, but partly it was because staging a raid unarmed would be suicide.

Quotes/Thoughts

“Nobody’s evil, they just decide to forget who they are.” “Some people are evil.”

Heath may or may not be dead, does anyone really care either way?

“If you’re going to keep thinking everyone’s an enemy, then enemies are all you’re going to find.”

Tara can never find anyone to give her a proper fist bump, which should be on her bucket list.

If you enjoyed Manny’s review, you can find the rest of his work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You can also follow him on Twitter @KN_Manny.

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