Aahana Swrup
As season 3 of ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ reaches its conclusion, Negan and Maggie find themselves fighting a war from the same side of the battlefield. After Negan’s reckless execution of Dillard’s walker friends at the bar, the ex-cop spirals out of control as he blazes his path of vengeance. He rounds up his own posse, aka the Dead Squad, with the intention of hunting down his enemies no matter the cost. In the process, he’s willing to lay waste to everything Maggie and Renata have worked so hard to build for the past couple of months. As a result, Negan, Maggie, and Hershel find themselves in not only a fight for their own survival, but also the safety of the community and their future in the city. As an all-out war breaks out, Manhattan’s future rests on a precarious precipice. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Dillard Uses Luis and the Rest of the Community to Draw Out Negan and Maggie
Dillard has always been one of the more eccentric survivors of the zombie apocalypse. He has managed to make it through the collapse of society and the tumultuous power politics of the post-apocalyptic world all on his own, without a community or family of any kind. Yet, the toll of the end of the world remains evident in the way he hides out in his bar with no one but a pair of declawed and defanged walkers for company. Years of solitude force him to delude himself into believing he can talk to these walkers in hopes of holding onto some semblance of his sanity. Even once Dillard starts to mingle with actual, alive human beings, he continues to have some attachment to his undead friends. For the same reason, Negan’s execution of Titicaca and ̃Cockenspiel has such a severe impact on Dillard, to the point of driving him to near madness.
In the aftermath, Dillard becomes obsessed with exacting revenge on Negan, and he’s prepared to go to any lengths to achieve this. This is what compels him to stab Renata and take over as the new leader of the Dead Squad, encouraging them to rebel against Maggie and seize the community’s resources. Their desire to kill the leader aids and abets his own mission of dropping Negan dead. Yet, the duo won’t be so easily bested. Dillard knows this, which is why he gives them an ultimatum. While Maggie and Negan stay in hiding, he locks the Haven residents inside the apartment buildings, nailing all exits shut. On the other hand, he ties Luis up to a post outside the building, with the promise of execution if Maggie fails to turn Negan in by a set time.
Maggie Comes Up With a Plan to Save the Haven and Negan Both
Initially, when Negan sees the gravity of the situation, he’s convinced that the only way out of the mess is through self-sacrifice. Over the course of the season, he has showcased a relative lack of care for bettering his own future. Still, time and again, he’s involved in efforts to keep the Haven safe, solely because he’s desperate to ensure Maggie and Hershel get to have a future. As such, with the same sentiment in mind, he tries to slip away to either turn himself in or confront Dillard. Nonetheless, Maggie manages to intercept his self-sacrifice in time. She convinces him that, despite their colorful past of enmity, it’s clear that their fates are entangled with one another in some way or another.
Thus, Maggie refutes Negan’s insistence that he’s a lone wolf with nothing to live for and insists that he’s the closest thing she has to a family after Hershel. For the same reason, she’s hellbent on saving him without sacrificing the new world she’s trying to build in the process. Fortunately, she has just the plan that could potentially help her pull both off. The only drawback remains that her plan requires the participation of three people. This means Hershel has to go out with them to play his role. Even though both adults attempt to give him an out, encouraging him to sit this one out, the young doc-in-training maintains that he won’t take the coward’s way out. He wants to fight for his community, and he wants to ensure his mother’s safety. Consequently, in the end, Hershel, Maggie, and Negan take their positions, setting their risky plan into motion.
Maggie Saves Luis, Herschel Secures the Apartments, and Negan Lures Dillard Away
As a part of Maggie’s plan, the trio splits up and goes their separate ways. Maggie takes to the tunnels, from where she breaks out the walkers and leads them back onto the streets to overwhelm Dillard’s Death Squad. Hershel ziplines his way into the locked-up apartment building. Once inside, he rallies the residents together, hiding them away in the upper floors while taking some of the voluntary fighters with him. Lastly, Negan’s job is to create a distraction and lure Dillard away to 96 and Columbo, where Maggie promises to be waiting for him to cover his six. However, before she can do that, she has to make a pit stop to save Luis. Naturally, once free, the doctor decides to help Maggie reach her destination.
However, the duo faces a hurdle when their path through the hospital turns out to be blocked by a swarm of walkers. Although Luis wants them to find a different way to Negan together, Maggie can’t risk losing time and abandons him to cut her way through the undead. Meanwhile, Negan finds himself cornered by the Reverend, who is all too happy to point his gun at the fugitive. Yet, before he can pull the trigger, the priest ends up biting a bullet himself, courtesy of Dillard. Shortly thereafter, Maggie also arrives at the scene and shoots at the power-hungry cop from the shadows. Nonetheless, his bulletproof vest ends up saving him. In the end, as Dillard holds Negan hostage, it forces Maggie to show herself and surrender her weapons, putting the two entirely at the madman’s mercy.
The Walking Dead Season 3 Ending: What Happens to Manhattan’s Future?
In season 3, Maggie sets out to create a new future for New York City, one that involves a return to civilization. The Croat’s energy-making plans, paired with a fateful meeting with Renata, the leader of an existing community in Manhattan, become catalysts in this mission. However, when Maggie joins forces with the other leader, she remains scared of her own potential. She doesn’t believe she can be both a mother and a leader of the people. Therefore, she shirks the title of Renata and takes on a secondary position. Yet, even though the latter is a great visionary with firm morals, she doesn’t have the resolve needed to bend some ethics for the benefit of the greater whole. Negan remains aware of the same and often ends up fulfilling the position of the ruthless executor to strike up a balance.
Nonetheless, this eventually brings them to their ultimate predicament: Renata meeting her end, leaving Dillard at the helm of the ship, eager to drive the entire operation to the ground. Nevertheless, in the end, he fails at his mission simply because he has the misfortune of going up against the two people who refuse to die out with the end of the world. Initially, when the ex-cop has Negan and Maggie at his mercy, he asks the former to kill the latter in a demonstration. This entire time, everything the former leader of the Saviors has been doing is in service of keeping Maggie safe. This is because to him, she is a symbol of hope that humanity can once again find its way toward civility and progress.
Therefore, when he stabs her, in order to put her off Dillard’s radar, he makes sure to do it in a way that she will survive. Fortunately, for Maggie, it’s only a matter of time before Luis shows up with his first-aid kit and patches her up. Therefore, once she’s back on her feet, she rescues Negan from Dillard, chopping off the cop’s arm, disarming Lucille from his grasp along the way. Back in the apartment, Hershel makes his first kill in pursuit of saving the community. Thus, once Dillard and his Death Squad are neutralized, Manhattan is finally free of all imminent threats. One week later, the survivors work together to put their fragile Haven back together again.
This time, Maggie steps up as the leader of the people that she was always meant to be. She has learned a lot from Renata and her righteous style of rule. Furthermore, she also has her own expertise to build upon. Moreover, she has the vision of salvaging the other boroughs in the city to bring about a new age. Yet, in order to make this lofty future a reality, she needs a partner by her side. More importantly, the Haven needs a guardian who will keep them safe from threats of the external and internal variety. As such, she offers the symbolic sheriff’s badge to Negan. Surprisingly enough, the loner accepts it. Where he has previously refused to become a part of the community, he’s happy to throw in his lot with them now that Maggie has stepped up as the leader. In the end, the two prepare to usher in a new age for the city.
Why Does Maggie Put Her Ring Away? What Does It Signify?
One of the pivot, if subtle, moments of the finale includes Maggie’s decision to put her treasured ring away, making the novel decision to stop wearing it. The ring actually belongs to her husband, Glenn, whom she lost a few years ago. In fact, it had been Negan who had brutally killed him. For a long time, Maggie’s decision to hold on to her beloved’s ring had been symbolic of her love for Glenn, but also her inability to move on from her past and bury the hatchet with Negan. While it’s evident that she has grown to care for him and has started to consider him a part of her family, there will always be a part of her that will never forgive him. Even so, at the end of season 3, she’s making the decision to implicitly trust the man by appointing him as her second-in-command. Thus, her decision to separate herself from Glenn’s ring becomes symbolic of her progressing forward.
Alternatively, there’s another facet of Maggie’s life that will likely be influenced by this highly symbolic act of putting Glenn’s ring away. In season 3, her relationship with Luis gradually evolves as the two get closer and begin to trust each other with their pasts and their futures. After their return from the Trader, Maggie had lost Glenn’s ring in an attack from the walkers. Negan had been the one to pull her away from the streets, saving her life while she stubbornly looked for the ring. Initially, it seems like the piece of jewelry, and subsequently a token of her past, has been lost. However, in the finale, Luis returns this ring to Maggie, revealing that he noticed how important it was for her and continued looking for it in the earthquake’s aftermath. As such, when Maggie puts the treasured ring away, it can also be interpreted as her decision to try to move on from her tragic romance with Glenn.
Why Did Dillard Not Want to Kill Negan? What Happens to Him?
After Titicaca and ̃Cockenspiel meet their demises, more than they already have, Dillard becomes obsessed with delivering Negan to his fate. The cop wants to put the latter in the ground, and he ends up gambling with Manhattan Haven’s future in order to ensure the same. Even so, in the end, when he has a gun trained on his enemy’s head, he hesitates. When it’s time to pull the trigger, Dillard realizes he isn’t actually prepared to kill Negan. This is because, despite everything, the two share a past of brotherhood and camaraderie. Before Negan, the bar-owner had been entirely on his own with no one but undead zombies for company. In many ways, Negan brought him back to the land of the living.
Titicaca and ̃Cockenspiel’s shattered Dillard’s reality in a way that pushes him into a dark headspace, where all he can see is his desire for revenge. However, if he kills Negan, he would have to remain stuck in this new reality. For the same reason, he hesitates to kill his old friend. Instead, he asks him to turn on Maggie as twisted proof of his reciprocated friendship. In the end, Maggie kills him by chopping off his arm. However, Negan stops her from braining him to ensure he doesn’t turn into a zombie. For better or worse, Negan understands Dillard’s plight. He knows that it was his pursuit of some peace of mind that led him to lose his grip on reality. Since he couldn’t find that sense of peace as a human, he wants to give the ex-cop a chance at zombie-living. The last we see of Dillard, he has turned into a walker, identical to the ones he surrounded himself with for years.
Read More: The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 Episode 6 Recap: Genesis
You must be logged in to post a comment.