'The Walking Dead' Episode 3, Season 7 Review

Image from Den of Geek

By Darian Scalamoni

            It doesn’t seem to necessarily be “Easy Street” for Daryl in episode 3 of this season of The Walking Dead. Following last week’s reveal of The Kingdom which Morgan and Carol now reside with their King Ezekiel, we now get a closer look at the saviors and what they’ve been doing since taking Daryl hostage at the end of the season premiere.

            Even more so though, this episode is a real look at Dwight rather than Daryl. Negan’s right hand man has previous issues with Daryl but it’s hard to not feel for the man Negan refers to as “D” as it seems he’s trapped as Negan’s number two and can’t make decisions for himself. Daryl came across Dwight along with his wife Sherry and her sister Tina back in season 6 and they were escaping Negan, but as an audience we weren’t aware of that information at the time. After Tina is killed by a walker, D and Sherry decide to steal Daryl’s bike and crossbow and leave him for dead. The next time we encountered D though, his face was burned and now we know that this was a punishment by Negan for him trying to escape earlier in the series. Not only that, but then we discover that Negan was going to kill one of them unless Sherry agreed to marry him. Long story short, Dwight is single and Sherry is miserable as Negan’s spouse.

            Having said that, Dwight now must act as one of goons for Negan and though the bat-wielding lunatic claims that things are “totally cool” you can tell on Dwight’s face that that can’t possibly be the case. It is rather interesting to see so many people fear a guy like Negan as we’ve seen other authority figures like The Governor and King Ezekiel recently and neither are worshipped as much as Negan so much that people kneel every time he walks past. It adds just that much to the character played so beautifully and playfully in a horrific manner by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

            In regards for Daryl, it’s a bad week for the fan-favorite as we see him at his absolute lowest point thus far in the series. Naked, freezing, dirty and beaten is Daryl and we see that Dwight feeds him a daily sandwich that is just a bun with dog feed in between. Worse of all, he does not sleep. Every time he’s left alone by Dwight, loud obnoxious music is blasted right outside his door. It acts most definitely as a form of torture that is messing with his psyche. This is obviously a ploy by Negan to get Daryl to tag along as one of his lackeys. He then gives him three choices, continue to suffer all his pain and torture as a prisoner, join Negan and live like a “king” or he can die and work in the yard for Negan as one of the dead. All he needs to answer with is “Negan” as all of his men do but instead he refuses and answers “Daryl”.

            Clearly, Daryl is being stubborn and though that’s what fits his character description, he sure as hell isn’t making it easier for himself by choosing to rebel on his own from Negan. But with this stubbornness we see a humanity to Dwight as he yells at the prisoner “you’re gonna wind up in that room or hanging on the fence!” This is clear… he doesn’t want Daryl to die. This is an amazing moment because Daryl responds with “I get why you did it. Why you took it. You were thinking about someone else. That’s why I can’t.” This is a nice, authentic moment as we see that Daryl is doing what he’s doing to protect the people he cares about.

            All in all, it was a unique and powerful episode of TWD and the writing seems to be top notch yet again this season. I wish we could see all of the characters week to week rather than last week and this week which the episodes seem like standalone installments but I did like how much information we got of Dwight’s backstory, the situation Daryl is in as well as a closer look at how Negan effects everyone around him.

8.4/10