The Walking Dead is back! Before we begin the last leg of this season, let’s see where we left off with the latest Things To Note!
This is the beginning of the end of The Walking Dead. Obviously, the franchise will live on in its spinoff series, but for the main series, this is the final third of the final season.
While it’s sad to see it go, we can still enjoy it while it lasts, and it has been so long since we last saw an episode of the original series, I feel it necessary for us to take a minute and have a refresher so that we’re not left scratching our heads trying to remember what happened the last time we saw the show…in April.
For those unaware, Things To Note is a series wherein I go back through each Walking Dead episode and attempt to locate all the little things — The hints, clues, references, trivia, and small details — which might get overlooked during a first viewing, and put them all together in one place, so you don’t have to go looking for them the second time around. Hopefully, by the time we’re finished here, you’ll be all caught up with what was happening at the end of the second part of the season.
Are you ready? Because it’s time for another installment of The Walking Dead: Things To Note!
The Walking Dead final season
1) This episode’s “Previously on The Walking Dead” — Focusing on Lance Hornsby’s determination to find the Riverbenders at Hilltop, Daryl telling Maggie to allow the Commonwealth to search Hilltop, Sebastian Milton forcing Daryl and Rosita to loot the house of his late friend, Cooper, Rosita telling Connie that the Commonwealth needs to know the horrific lengths Sebastian went to for money, Eugene asking Governor Milton’s assistant, Max, to steal files on the people named on a list secretly given to Connie, and Hornsby presenting Leah Shaw a job offer — is voiced by Lauren Cohan.
2) This episode gets its name from the setting we’re presented with after the show returns from the title sequence: “19 Hours and one Act of God ago…”.
3) The coin Lance Hornsby flips has a picture of President Milton on it and was minted in 1982 (Or, at the very least, has that date on it, though it’s hard to imagine that year having any other significance beyond its mintage), has a buffalo on it, and, instead of the nation’s motto of “E Pluribus Unum” or “In God we trust”, has the words “Pedestre Mortuus est”, which roughly translates to “Walking Dead”.
4) Since living presidents (Or living people in general) can’t be on the money in the U.S., this would mean that President Milton could have been president no later than the 1976-1980 term of office, though it’s unlikely he’d appear on coins only two years after leaving. This suggests he was president some years earlier. As to which presidency from our own timeline he’d replace, it’s impossible to tell.
5) It should also be noted that the coin has no denomination or value marker on it. Is it some sort of seal of the president? Or does the buffalo indicate the coin is a nickel? Buffalo did grace the five-cent piece for a couple of decades starting in the 1910s but wouldn’t appear on coins again until 2006, so perhaps that tradition carried on for longer in this universe?
The Walking Dead recap
6) As Max prepares for work, she expresses concern about what digging for the truth behind the people on Connie’s list might cost her and Eugene (And, probably, Rosita, Connie, and Kelly), something which was a major theme of the previous episode, “Trust”.
7) While talking with Maggie about the Commonwealth, Negan calls the bunker he, the Riverbenders, and the Hilltoppers are hiding in a “Whisperer wormhole”. What on Earth did the Whisperers use it for? To hide from the horde? The weather? To hibernate during the winter? For Food storage?
8) Romano, the Commonwealth trooper Daryl interrogates, is the thirty-third named character to die this season.
9) Marco is the thirty-fourth named character to die this season and the first Hilltopper to die since Alden in the midseason premiere episode, “No Other Way”.
The Walking Dead – Acts of God
10) Ezekiel says that he has people waiting to distribute the story about Sebastian’s failed heists. Has he hooked up with the rebels that disgraced trooper Tyler Davis was part of?
11) If so, when did Ezekiel pull this off? How did he get to such a position within their organization so (Relatively) quickly?
12) Leah’s death at the hands of Maggie makes her the thirty-fifth named character to die this season, as well as makes her the last of the Reapers to die.
13) With his penchant for flipping his coin before (Apparently) deciding whether people live or die, his generally duplicitous nature, and his newly scarred face, Lance Hornsby makes for a surprisingly good parallel to iconic Batman villain, Two-Face.
And that ends our installment of Things To Note for this week! Was there anything you missed? Was there anything I missed? Let me know! Suppose you like this and want to read more of my writings about surviving a zombie apocalypse; why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! And you can get it from Amazon here, and on iTunes here!