9x14 Scars

[10.0/10] I owe The Walking Dead something of an apology. When we met the new closed off Michonne after the six-year time jump, I naturally assumed it was because she’d lost Rick. After all, it was the last thing we saw before the series’s big shift, and lord knows that for eight and a half season, this show had the propensity to treat Rick Grimes like the center of the universe. Why should his absence from it change that?

And in some ways, “Scars” is about Rick’s absence, his hopes for Alexandria and his family, and the hole he left in the lives of the loved ones who survived him. But it’s just as much about the loss of Carl, and his dreams for the people he cared about and the place he called home. And while he’s never mentioned by name, it’s just as much about Michonne’s first son Andre, who died when the world fell. Because more than mourning the show’s former main character, this episode is about parenthood, about the balance between protecting the little lives that mean the most to you at all costs, but also about realizing that they are people, people who, like you, may have minds and thoughts of their own.

And it is about love, an all-powering love that causes parents to take the biggest risk, the strictest measures, to look after the people, especially the children who depend on them. But also a love that stands as a beacon against sealing oneself off from others, about closing ranks and not looking after others because you worry the risks are too great. It is one of the most harrowing, and yet heartening episodes of The Walking Dead so far, and a serious contender for the series’s best episode yet.

Part of that comes from the structure of the episode. Half of it is set in the present, where Michonne reluctantly takes in the quartet that escaped from The Whisperers in the prior episode, and goes out in search of Judith after she leaves to help them. Half of it is set in the past -- a brief enough time after Rick’s disappearance that Michonne is visibly pregnant the whole time -- where Michonne had the experience that made her so hesitant to trust anyone and so committed to the idea for making Alexandria a place that looks after the people they care about rather than the utopia that Carl once envisioned.

The stories are so complimentary, giving you cause and effect in unison. The show knows how to slow-spin each of them, letting you see Michonne’s hesitance turn into acceptance in the present at the same time her hope curdles into protective exclusion in the past. There’s masterful mirroring, with Judith’s disappearance six years ago paralleling her running away in the present, and Michonne’s desperation to find her being equal in both time periods. It’s rare that any show, let alone The Walking Dead, is so apt at threading the needle between two different stories, meant to inform one another but move at their own pace. The construction alone makes this one notable.

But the visuals are just as breathtaking and tell the story. There’s the same parallelism, in haunting but powerfully symbolic tones as Michonne slays walkers to save Michonne in the present to spare us from witnessing her felling children during a dark incident in the past. There’s both scenic beauty and the signs of possibility and progress as Daryl and Judith are framed far away from our perspective amid spinning waterwheels and talk about what the “Li’l Asskicker” knows about the past and what she’s ignorant of. There’s fluid conviction in brutality in the movement of Michonne’s sword into her former best friend’s leg, and artistic focus on the titular scars that linger with the young and mature alike.

For all its faults, The Walking Dead has always been adept at creating memorable visuals, but it tops itself here, providing striking image after striking image that don’t just wow the eye, but which serve the symbolism, the themes, and the emotion of the moment at every turn.

While Michonne’s hints to Lydia to make herself scarce are telling, and any scene between Danai Gurira and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is charged, it’s the story set in the past that is both devastating and moving. The tale of Michonne finding her old best friend, Jocelyn, from before the world fell, only to not only be betrayed by her, but have her child stolen, more than accounts for why Michonne would start turtling, emotionally and communally, and is draped in such understandable emotion and tragedy that it cannot help but be affecting.

Some of that is just a product of Danai Gurira’s incredible talents as an actress, which are on full display here. If I imagine what I want a post-Rick version of The Walking Dead to look like, this is pretty much it. Something focused on Michonne and Daryl on the one hand, and Carol and Ezekiel on the other, with concerns about the next generation taking center stage. But Gurira sells that struggle and resolve at every turn. Her fear and panic when Judith is missing, her vulnerability and pain when she wants to be upfront with her daughter, her anger when Negan puts the onus on her, and the abject reluctance but painful necessity of turning her blade on children when her own child’s life is on the line.

Maybe putting children’s lives at stake is too easy. It’s hard not to feel for Michonne in her Anakin Skywalker moment with Jocelyn. But you see how it has particular relevance, particular emotional weight, for her, given the unimaginable pain she’s had from losing multiple children the lengths she would go to avoid losing another. “Scars” dramatizes that expertly, and Gurira delivers it perfectly, from the easily renewed camaraderie with an unexpected confidante, to the sense of betrayal when that friend turns Pied Piper, to the “anything but that” position that poor Michonne finds herself in to save Judith.

There’s legitimate creepiness, built slowly, to Jocelyn’s gang of lost boys and girls. There’s the branding, the threats to Michonne’s unborn child, the slow-spun terror that emerges when Michonne has to balance protecting the last vestige of her lost love, the innocents programmed to threaten her, and the little girl whom she couldn’t bear to lose. “Scars” creates a horrifying terrible dilemma, one that spotlights the core of who Michonne is, and the price she’s had to pay, the turns she’s had to make, to try to make sure nothing like this happens to a child ever again.

But “Scars” isn’t just about how Michonne got to where she is now. It’s about how she gets better, how she starts to recover from so much loss and so many hard choices. That changes is spurred by Judith, who carries on her brother’s spirit and Michonne’s determination. That sense of hope for tomorrow, of a love that means extending the circle, opening yourself up and sharing and trusting, because it’s how that love has a chance to grow and flourish. For so long, Michonne has been trying to protect Judith’s childhood, to let her live unburdened by all the ugliness of this world.

And yet, in the end, it’s Judith’s innocence, the same type of blank slate care and intuitive love that Jocelyn corrupted to ill ends, that let’s her understand the world as it could be, not just as it is. In “Scars”, The Walking Dead doesn't just deliver its most laudable message yet, it does so via two stories that complement each other perfectly, and deepens an already potent relationship with the remembrances of those lost and what they believed in. To be frank, you may as well end the series here, because I’m not sure where else there is to go, what more you could do to sum up the risks and hardships, but also the rewards and joys and spiritual growth that this show is capable of, than what we get right here.

(9.7/10) - This episode was phenomenal from start to finish and is certainly one I will remember for being dark, very well written and powerful. Michonne has been quite a prominent character in previous seasons, but has slowly become less involved in the different storylines, so this was a much needed insight into recent events from her perspective.

In this episode, rather than Alpha and her group of Whisperers, an old friend of Michonne’s, named Jocelyn, served as the primary antagonist, along with a whole group of survivors (primarily children) who were accompanying her. I really enjoyed this concept of Michonne trying to find herself and her children. Also, the dialogue between her and Judith was very meaningful.

I particularly enjoyed the scene where Negan gets a visit from Michonne and they discuss Judith and how Negan has been telling her stories about Rick and Carl’s past. I am glad that they haven’t been forgotten and to be fair I still believe that Rick may be alive.

In the next episode, I am hoping to find out what has happened to Morgan, Maggie and/or Jadis as these characters haven’t really been spoken about recently, which is making me increasingly intrigued to find out what their situations are.

Episode 14 ended with a Whisperer duo peeking through the bushes only to find a group of Alexandrians arriving at the Kingdom, where they were preparing for the fair. If they really do inform Alpha of the gathering of the communities, then I have a great feeling about the next episode as it could be pretty magnificent, but I am very fearful for our characters. The Highwaymen are also clearly a threat so let’s see where Episode 15 takes us…