‘The Walking Dead’ Season 11, Episode 21 Review: ‘Outpost 22’

This review is late for me. I won't give you excuses. AMC has not given us much to look forward to in the eleventh and final season of The Walking Dead.

The Commonwealth storyline has been a disaster. At the same time, goofy and dull at the same time. Lance was killed off in the last episode of the season. Pamela is not interesting or plausible in the least.

The pace is finally picking up and last Sunday's episode marks the beginning of a more exciting arcs just in time for this show to wrap up.

I will keep a brief recap of Episode 21 since I will be reviewing Episode 22 and 23 today.

Some of our heroes are captured, some escape, some plan their escape, and some chase down the capturers. There are children who have been taken and who are not known.

The prisoners are taken on a busload of prisoners to a work camp where they are expected to carry sticks and rocks around. It is very similar to a work camp, but I will let it slide.

Kelly would like to escape since there are so few guards, but he is cautious. For the first time, the Stormtroopers can shoot with deadly accuracy, and they can mow down escapees without ceremony.

In order to hatch an escape plan, he enlisted the assistance of Ezekiel. He is concerned about Annie, who was taken away. The man is unhappy about working with the man. "For the shit I've done, I probably deserve to be here," he said. It's right. It doesn't fit my wife and baby that's on its way.

The only way to get prisoners to revolt is through hope. That's your thing, you know what I mean. It is not my thing.

The prisoners are in a truck. They broke free and caused the truck to crash. There are two people in the dirt.

A child zombie walks towards a group of people. With the soldier distracted,Maggie stabbed him through the arm and grabbed his gun.

Two people are looking for their friends after the killing of another person. All three groups will come together soon. Gabriel got some information out of the dying Stormtrooper.

The train comes and they waylay it. One of the Stormtroopers tried to hold her at gun point, but they took the conductor prisoner and freed her.

The Stormtrooper was caught off guard when she escaped on a motorcycle. Carol shoots at him and misses, and Daryl chases him down. There is a fun chase. When the bad guy runs off on foot, Daryl does a motorcycle slide under a fallen tree move that knocks the goon to the ground. Without warning, Daryl took out his knife and killed him. We could have used more of these throughout the season but we are getting them now.

When the train conductor is taken prisoner, he tells them that there is a map in the train that will show them where everyone is going. The conductor killed himself because he didn't want his family to be killed. It's really sad.

They get in radio contact with the Commonwealth, pretending to be members of the convoy who got separated and asking for directions to meet up. The answer was unexpected. The camp is called Alexandria and it's a prison camp. At the end of the show, the rest are taken. The first stop along the way was a place called "move sticks and rocks"

Pam is going to pay. She won't see it coming.

Missed Opportunities

The missed opportunities for this final season to have been so much better is one of the issues I am having with this show. The story beats they chose to skip over are important ones that could have helped flesh out this final confrontation.

He talks about how much he loves Annie and how she has made him a better man. He is willing to sacrifice himself for Annie, despite the fact that he can't. We weren't able to see them meet We didn't get to know how they fell in love. The audience should be interested in Annie the same way they are interested in Negan. The whole thing was skipped over. We spent a lot of time with our group fighting the random Reaver group.

It's the same for the bloated cast. We have spent too much time this season introducing new characters or hopping between established secondary characters instead of focusing on the core group. This is something I liked about this episode. The focus has been narrowed down to two groups, the first and the second, and they both have different characters. It feels more focused now.

There are a lot of scattered thoughts.

• I liked Gabriel’s line: “Because you’re a coward” when he’s talking with the dying Stormtrooper. I am less fond of the fact that Random Commonwealth Guy gets a more dramatic death than many of our heroes. A lot more screen-time than poor Hornsby.
• The motorcycle chase was fun but why is Daryl so much faster than the other guy?
• The train conductor ends up killing himself rather than have the Commonwealth discover that he helped our heroes because the Commonwealth “will torture me and then they’ll kill my family.” I feel like a lot more work needed to go into building the Commonwealth up into that kind of place before we got to this point. It’s never come across as even remotely that sinister. Bad? Sure. But nothing like this.
• Was Connie the only prisoner on that train? I don’t think we see any others. And how did that Stormtrooper know to use her as his bullet shield?
• The zombie kid was a nice callback to some other traumatizing events in The Walking Dead’s history, but the moment felt a little forced to me. Too on-the-nose with Maggie’s own fears about her kidnapped child. (I’m not sure about her naming the kid Hershel instead of Glenn also, the more I think about it, but whatever).

The episode was a good one. It has been a long time since we made up for lost time. The pacing was better this season, with fun action scenes and some dramatic twists and turns. No Eugene romance, no ice cream, no protesters at the Commonwealth chanting, knowing that their families will be killed and they will all be sent far away to work camps.

What were you thinking? You can let me know on social media.