The Walking Dead gets awfully messy in its very last midseason finale

A lot of things happen in “Acts Of God,” the very last midseason finale of The Walking Dead, that are theoretically very exciting. Commonwealth stormtroopers turn on Daryl, Gabriel, and Aaron, leading to a massive shootout in an abandoned salvage yard. Max steals the files that implicate Pamela Milton in the criminally repressive actions of her government. Maggie has a tense showdown with Leah that ends in a fight to the death. And Lance Hornsby officially claims Hilltop, Alexandria, and Oceanside in the name of The Commonwealth, with an episode-ending cliffhanger in which he presumably flips a coin to determine the fate of every resident in that last outpost.

That’s intense stuff. And occasionally, it feels like it. The intimacy of Max’s heist of the paperwork from Milton’s office—and Sebastian nearly catching her in the act, his every glance and utterance a vague threat—is nerve-wracking material, the small-scale nature of the exchange helping to ratchet up the tension. But too often, these would-be thrills were sapped of drama, whether through haphazard staging or rushed development, and the episode sagged under that failure of execution. Rarely did it seem like anyone we cared about was in danger. It was a little too symbolic of how the series often plays out during these last seasons—full of sound and fury, signifying (almost) nothing.

Both within and outside of The Commonwealth, all of the behind-the-scenes manipulations and bubbling tensions finally boiled over, so let’s address them in turn. Inside the walls, Eugene and Max finally pulled the trigger on their plan to steal files that could prove Governor Milton had been covering up for Sebastian, to the tune of 200-some people who have been disappeared in one way or another by security forces. As mentioned above, the actual sequence of her taking the files was strong, the small and personal nature of it actually working in the scene’s favor to heighten tension. Sebastian is such a little worm, but he oozes menace when he’s in a situation like this, where he could potentially end someone’s life. And Max is not exactly a master of playing it cool.

If only it were a little clearer what the larger plan is, other than, “Let’s overthrow the ruling power structure of The Commonwealth.” Connie even says they don’t have proof yet, just the suggestion of the brutal repression indicated by the list. So what are they expecting, other than for Connie and Kelly to immediately be thrown in jail for writing and distributing a story meant to provoke conflict? (And where is their samizdat newspaper printing machine, given there’s zero chance Connie’s boss at the real paper would let her do this?) Unless the sisters are planning to immediately go into hiding, this doesn’t feel like the most well-thought-out strategy, especially since they still need proof, and the “Pamela Milton Is Lying To You” headline is going to cause an instant lockdown by the government.

The lion’s share of the action this episode is elsewhere, however, starting with the big shootout between Daryl/Gabriel/Aaron and the stormtroopers, which is one of those action setpieces that live or die based on how they’re shot. Unfortunately, this one was awfully messy. Catriona McKenzie has a solid resume as a TV director, but a large-scale kinetic sequence like this requires clear establishing shots to make clear the layout of the scene and define where all the characters are in relation to each other.

Instead, I had no idea where anyone was, so when the bullets started flying, it just felt scattershot and unfocused, a bunch of people firing in all directions and running around random vehicles. What should have been cool was incoherent and perfunctory; even the moments that suggested something more surprising might happen (like Gabriel and Aaron both getting clipped by bullets) were dead ends, discarded even before the act break. Again: Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

At least it set those three guys on the trail of Hornsby. After spending the first half of the episode setting up the conflict (and delivering some fleeting character beats to suggest Maggie has finally turned the corner on Negan), they learn the plan is to take out everyone who opposes Hornsby, followed quickly thereafter by Daryl realizing Leah is on the hunt. All of which lets the show edit together a Maggie-Leah showdown in which Daryl ends up saving the day by shooting the woman he once loved in the head.

At least that was a little unexpected. So much of how this assault on Hilltop and Maggie went down was so paint-by-numbers, it was disappointing. Of course the only person to get shot was Marco, the guy we knew so little about, you’d be hard-pressed to remember his name. (Thank goodness Maggie shouted it when Leah plugged him in the head, as though wanting to be helpful for any viewers confused who that rando was. He may as well have been wearing a red Starfleet shirt.) Any cool moment, like our heroes setting a trap to blow up the house with the Commonwealth’s black ops fighters inside, was immediately followed by clunky cheese, like filming Leah walking in slo-mo as though she were a terminator.

I did appreciate the brief chat between Maggie and Leah, after the latter knocked out the former and woke her up tied to a chair in the cabin Leah used to share with Daryl. (Subtle location callbacks are a good thing.) Leah says some nonsense about how fate seems to slowly take everyone, until Maggie corrects her: “It wasn’t fate. I killed your people because it was what I wanted.” She provokes the fight that follows, which ends up allowing for the standard just-in-time save by Daryl.

But again, the symbolism of everybody we know who has a big role to play only getting grazed with bullets—Gabriel, Aaron, even Hornsby himself—is really indicative of how hesitant this show is to make a bold move, even during the final midseason finale, when it would have made sense to kill off at least one major player. The show wants to feint at being daring without actually committing to it. It’s as though the creative team were Max, responding to Eugene’s effusive professions of how great she is: “Let’s not get carried away, here.” Please, Walking Dead: get carried away. You’ve experimented with style in these past eight episodes, but almost never with narrative, and that lack of conviction has cast a dispiriting pall over this middle act of the final season. Your show is ending: Let’s go out in a way that packs a punch as unexpectedly potent as Rick Grimes shooting a little kid in the first five minutes of the pilot. Deliver that, and maybe, just maybe, there will be a sense of earned satisfaction when all of these shambling undead are finally laid to rest.

Stray observations

• Daryl can still get a cool moment in the middle of all this, picking up the walkie talkie of the stormtrooper whose head he just blew off, in order to respond to Hornsby: “He ain’t here anymore.”
• It’s too bad we didn’t get enough time with Pamela Milton to make her material with Max here land. The conversation about “If we can’t show emotion to each other…” is the kind of thing that would have promise on a series that had given over time to these people and their relationship.
• I actually admired the way the Max-Sebastian exchange had the little jerk back off, because he’s too arrogant to engage in an actual struggle with her. “Caffeine: the poor man’s drug.”
• I guess that was enough setup for the forthcoming Maggie/Negan miniseries.
• I really hope Lydia gets more to do in the final arc than periodically chime in with exposition or to move the plot along. Cassady McClincy is being wasted right now.
• Hey everyone, this will be my final Walking Dead review for the site. If you haven’t seen the news elsewhere, G/O Media is relocating The A.V. Club to Los Angeles to be a more industry-friendly publication. That means all of the Chicago staffers, including myself, have left or will be gone as of the end of this month. I just want to say, the best thing about this beat has been watching along with all of you, reading your comments, and seeing this odd little community of fans enrich the experience. I’ll miss you all; you can find me on Twitter—feel free to say hi, and if you want to do the secret handshake to let me know you’ve been reading, simply use the phrase, “I guess Dan Fogler just wandered off into the woods at the end of season 10, huh.”