The Very Good Babies Sworn to Protect Tara With Our Lives...

As The Walking Expressionless has staggered through its seventh season, information technology's drawn frequent criticisms for what has seemed to exist a total abandonment of the upstanding questions it struggled with throughout the early on years of its run.

That's why the bear witness'due south option to spend "Swear" weighing a militant all-female caucus's determination not to kill an intruder is an honest surprise. After multiple encounters with bands of survivors prone to violence and mistrust, "Swear" is a reminder that somewhere beneath all its contempo sadism, The Walking Expressionless notwithstanding has a heart.

Of course, the episode besides sets us upward for some serious betrayal later on (more on that in a bit). But on its own, "Swear" is an almost gentle break from the monotony of Negan'south endless torture.

"Swear" picks upward a story last mentioned half a season ago

The opening of the episode finds us on a rocky embankment where a young girl, Rachel, and a young adult female, Cyndie (Sydney Park), are scouting for walkers when they detect a washed-up body. Surprise! Information technology'southward Tara (Alanna Masterson). Nosotros oasis't seen Tara since episode 12 of flavour 6, when she and Heath left Alexandria for a supply hunt.

In practical terms, Tara and Heath's absences are a result of Masterson taking a break from The Walking Dead after having a baby, and Corey Hawkins, who plays Heath, stepping away to play the pb part in Fox's new reboot of 24. Simply in show terms, Tara's render is a stark reminder of simply how niggling time has passed since we saw her bid goodbye to Denise — just ii weeks in the testify'south universe.

While the rest of the Alexandrians have experienced one traumatic upshot afterward another in that fortnight, Tara and Heath have been out scavenging for supplies. They've barely plant annihilation, only Tara remains hopeful that there's something out at that place that will brand the trip worth information technology: "There's nix out at that place that stays hidden; we but have to find information technology," she says.

In flashbacks, "Swear" reveals that Heath has wrestled with guilt over what Rick's group did to the Saviors, attacking them as they slept. But Tara, believing the mission successfully eliminated a threat, insists they did the right affair. Presently subsequently this conversation, the ii run into a horde of zombies on a bridge and get separated when Tara is knocked into the water below. That'due south presumably how she ends up on the embankment, where nosotros detect her at the first of the episode.

When Tara wakes up in Cyndie and Rachel's presence, Cyndie is kind to her. She stops the younger Rachel from gleefully killing Tara, sneaks her some food, and later protects her from the rest of the women in Cyndie and Rachel'due south women-only village. The village is hidden deep in the woods and heavily armed, and its residents have sworn to kill anyone who intrudes upon their hideout in guild to protect it from discovery. But considering Cyndie is the granddaughter of the group'due south leader, Natania (Deborah May), she is granted the opportunity to make a case for letting Tara live.

From there, "Swear" largely concerns itself with the question of whether the women volition decide to kill Tara or spare her life despite their vow. Though the episode suffers from the same strangely leisurely pace that has divers flavour 7 so far, it also offers relief in the class of a grouping of survivors who seem to exist actively questioning whether their kill-on-sight policy is a good one.

The Walking Dead is now so consistently dystopian that the new survivors' transparency is kind of refreshing

The show'due south previous moral dilemmas about the best style to maintain peaceful societies in the post-apocalypse have fallen casualty to a basic requirement of keeping the show going for season after flavour: The narrative tin't permit peace to be a commonly held goal. Sure, Rick'south preemptive strike against the Saviors may take been an unwise conclusion that led to Glenn's decease, Rick'southward humiliation, and the subsequent beggary of the Alexandrians to the Savior's demands. But The Walking Dead has fabricated it clear through its countless, boring posturing from Negan that the Saviors would have come up for them eventually. And every bit the show has previously seemed to argue, at to the lowest degree Rick wasn't passive in managing the Saviors' threat.

But "Swear" questions that logic a scrap. The women in the woods have opted to run and hide from Negan rather than fight him; they're very upfront near their reasons for living the way they practice, and their motives for choosing to impale whatsoever intruders on sight. In the universe of The Walking Dead, it's well-nigh more of a stretch that they don't immediately kill Tara, even as information technology's nice to meet a group of people who yearn to trust and believe in humanity once again. While Rachel's please at the prospect of murdering Tara reminds u.s. to spare a thought for Lizzie, the bear witness's tardily child psychopath, the rest of the group is more or less not and then much downward with the thought. (We aren't told whether Tara is the first person to come up along and examination the group'south stated MO, but we are told that "normally" they "shoot strangers on sight.")

"Swear" doesn't quite lead to a happy Thanksgiving meal between friends (i dream Thanksgiving this season was probably enough), just Tara and Cyndie'south firsthand connection and trust in i another bear witness us how rare trust has get in this world.

To make the women-just village work as a concept, The Walking Dead has to make the Saviors even more inconsistent

Because Tara doesn't know the Saviors are even so a threat, "Swear" concerns itself with her gradual realization that Rick'southward group'southward mission to kill the Saviors was in vain. The women in Cyndie and Rachel's village are still clearly living in terror of Negan and his followers, and no wonder: After the Saviors discovered their previous settlement, Negan strategically killed every male in their group over age ten, spurring the women to pack up their bags and escape in the middle of dark. At that point, they relocated and formed the Shyamalan-esque village in the woods where Tara ends up.

Equally horrifying as it is to find that Negan murdered all the men in their group, it also makes no sense. Based on what we've seen of Negan so far, he's mainly been interested in mining Alexandria for resource, weapons, and stiff-bodied men to interruption. However, the women in the woods have a small armory at their disposal, suggesting that Negan took a completely different approach when he first happened upon them than he did when slowly and systematically convincing the Alexandrians.

We tin purchase that Negan slaughtered all the men in order to farm himself a ready sexual harem, only it's a huge stretch to accept that he wouldn't take immediately taken the villagers' guns. This revelation also makes his obsession with breaking Rick and Daryl seem even weirder; why didn't he only kill all the men of Alexandria and exist washed with it, every bit he did to the men in the other settlement? What can he possibly desire with Rick every bit an individual at this indicate, when he's been content to slaughter a whole village presumably full of able-bodied and resourceful male leaders?

Thus, in introducing the village in the woods, The Walking Dead turns the Saviors into an ever-more than-unwieldy plot device. While the obvious reason for Negan's inconsistent behavior is that Rick and Daryl are our heroes, increasingly both Negan and the specter of the Saviors experience more bizarre than menacing. Negan is supposed to loom larger than life and appear unpredictable and terrifying, only in a globe where the mechanisms of life and death are already so cruel and random, his particular make of vicious randomness but feels like weird plot inconsistency.

In any case, The Walking Expressionless is clearly setting us up for an eventual unification between Rick's group and the women in the wood. Rick's people need guns, and the women in the woods have plenty. Nosotros already know hiding won't work; Tara told united states of america so herself at the first of the episode. And "Swear," in its very championship, foreshadows vows beingness broken.

In fact, the unabridged episode revolves effectually boast: Heath recalls that he and Tara only promised to spend two weeks hunting, not a moment more; when she finally makes her way dorsum to the span, the signal of their separation, it seems as though he may have headed for the hills. During her conference with the village leaders, Tara learns that she may be the sole exception to their shoot-kickoff policy; later, however, afterwards promising to assist her return to the bridge, her escorts apparently interruption their hope and turn their guns on her.

Afterward Tara escapes from them 1 last fourth dimension with Cyndie'due south assistance, she asks why Cyndie'southward non similar the other women in the hamlet — why she's and then determined to trust Tara and spare her life. "Why aren't yous?" Cyndie responds. Cyndie takes a huge take a chance on Tara not to surrender the women's location — and when Tara returns to Alexandria, she returns the favor. In the final scene, she refuses to disclose that she found anything, much less another ring of survivors and a potential source of help, out in the woods.

The exchange of trust between Cyndie and Tara is a crucial reminder that in the world of The Walking Dead, hope and trust in the pacifist side of the homo spirit are vanishingly rare. But the final moments of the episode, when Tara chooses not to betray Cyndie's trust, are framed every bit a betrayal of her own people instead — a refusal to give them info they desperately need. It'due south a barbarous twist on an episode that attempted to wrench promise and optimism out of a set of increasingly dire circumstances.

Tara'southward friendship with Cyndie now joins Morgan's unflagging optimism as one of the series' few vivid spots at the moment. But like all bright spots on The Walking Expressionless, it probably won't remain untarnished for long.

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The Very Good Babies Sworn to Protect Tara With Our Lives...

Source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/11/27/13714896/walking-dead-s7-episode-6-recap-tara

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