‘The Walking Dead’ Season 11, Episode 13 ‘Warlords’ Recap And Review: More Bad TV

Well I have to say, I was expecting a lot more from Sunday night’s episode of The Walking Dead. ‘Warlords’ was touted as a return to form for AMC’s zombie drama. I’d heard murmurings that it was the best episode in a long time.

I hate to say it, but I disagree. I disagree bigly. This was a convoluted mess of absurd coincidences, laughable contrivances and a pointless plotline that conveniently sets up the Commonwealth as Very Bad People™ for our band of heroes.

For no reason whatsoever.

The basic premise is simple: Hornsby has some kind of project he’s working on that he doesn’t want his boss, Pamela Milton, to find out about. He enlists the help of one of his cronies—a retired spec ops guy with a very specific set of skills—and tells him to bring Aaron and Gabriel along for the ride. The goal is to stomp a small community they suspect of stealing a secret arms shipment and find the guns. They tell Aaron and Gabriel it’s a diplomatic mission. I guess Hornsby thinks their ignorance will help them get inside, since they seem like pretty genuine people. It’s a deception tactic, but it feels like a poor choice nonetheless.

This is the first stupid thing about the episode. Bringing Aaron and Gabriel on such a delicate, secretive and violent mission is a huge risk. They’re newcomers. They’re from a new community that Hornsby and Milton want to absorb into the Commonwealth, and they’ve worked tirelessly to build trust with them. All that work and then you just lie to their faces and turn them into potential enemies? Maybe have them killed?

It’s so unbelievably stupid. I’m still in shock that the writer’s room thought this was a good idea, that someone as constantly sneaky and treacherous as Hornsby would make such a rookie error.

But hey, it gets worse! At least we can chock this one up to Hornsby’s arrogance, thinking that these men are bigger pushovers than they truly are.

In any case, Aaron, Gabriel and New Guy™ join Hornsby’s bruiser, Carlson, and approach this new community without backup. The soldiers that go on the mission with them all hang back. The group lives in an apartment building. They agree to take the four of them to their leader.

He’s a predictably unhinged-seeming guy named Ian (played by Michael Biehn!) so mistrustful that he pulls a gun on them when he decides they’re up to no good. “Get down on your bleeping knees!” he screams furiously.

He’s very much a Walking Dead Community Leader™ and things look pretty dire for our heroes—until Aaron talks him down, promising that they’ll never come back. Ian relents, lowers his weapon. Takes his eyes off Carlson. “What a day,” hen says. “What a goddamn day.”

Suddenly Carlson grabs the gun and mows down the guards, shooting Ian in the shoulder. Turns out, Carlson wasn’t interested in welcoming these guys into the Commonwealth after all.

MORE FROM FORBESIs Netflix Worth It Anymore?By Erik Kain

Time-Jumping The Shark

Before we go further, I should note that all of this is told out of order. So we don’t know that Hornsby has sent Carlson in to to get the guns back and put the hurt on these people until after this scene. I get why that’s a useful way to tell the story. By withholding that information, we’re more surprised when Carlson turns out to be someone much more dangerous and brutal than we ever suspected.

The problem is that the events that comprise this story are so implausible and ridiculous that any attempt at nonlinear storytelling just comes off as a way to disguise the poor plotting.

Sure, it’s surprising when Carlson suddenly goes all death machine, but why do this in front of two total newcomers to the Commonwealth? Why work so hard to convince them this is a good place?

There are also simply too many jumps. After the flashback to Hornsby giving Carlson his mission, we return to the room with Carlson, Aaron, Gabriel and Ian, along with a few Commonwealth soldiers. Carlson interrogates Ian, pistol-whipping him whenever he gives him an answer he doesn’t want. At one point Gabriel very awkwardly smacks Carlson to get him to stop (it doesn’t work out so well). Carlson ends up killing Ian and very nearly killing Aaron.

Then we flash forward to where Aaron has met up with Maggie, Lydia and Elijah. You see, at the very beginning of the episode, back at Alexandria, a guy shows up on a horse all bloody and dying and tells them that they “slaughtered everyone” and gives them a map showing them where to go. These three head out (clearly you only need three people to stop a slaughter) and encounter Aaron on the road. That’s when we get the first flashback.

When we flash forward to Aaron talking with them, Maggie mentions the map he gave to the guy they found who asked them for help and Aaron says that he didn’t give anyone a map. “Who did?” Maggie asks.

And we jump back 12 hours—during the attack—to find out. This is the sixth or seventh jump at this point, and it brings us to our next wild coincidence.

New Guy freaks out when the bullets start flying. I’m not sure why they brought someone on this mission who would freak out when the mission started, but they brought three—two outsiders from Alexandria and one kid so green and out of the loop that he runs and ends up warning total strangers about his own people carrying out a military mission. For reasons. Because yes, it’s New Guy who shows up at Alexandria, bleeding out, to enlist their help.

Who sends New Guy with the map, entrusting that he will find a place he’s never been and be able to convince total strangers to come to their aid?

Why, Negan of course! Negan just so happens to be at the very compound where the Commonwealth has sent Aaron and Gabriel on a false-flag mission. He just so happens to stumble upon New Guy and send him off with a map for help despite not knowing him, and New Guy just so happens to make it. Convenient coincidences just keep dropping, one after the other.

I mean, what are the chances that Negan splits off from Maggie near wherever the Reapers were living (in Maggie’s old haunts which were quite a ways from Alexandria) and then makes it to this specific community where he’s welcomed in by nutso Ian and his crew, and then the first mission that the Commonwealth sends Aaron and Gabriel on turns out to be the same exact place?

I’m not sure I follow the geography, the timeline or, well, any of this. It’s all so bloody convenient. Negan left like three episodes ago but now here he is, saving the day in a sideways mission that just so happens to involve two of his long-time compatriots.

Give me a break. I mean, at least it’s not Eugene crying and blubbering, but in some ways this is all worse. It’s trying very hard to be serious television, but it just comes across as goofy, poorly written and contrived.

Maggie et alia show up as Carlson starts throwing people off the roof. I guess the best way to find your missing guns is to toss people to their death. Some of the survivors, including Gabriel and Negan and a new female character Negan seems to have taken an interest in, hide below the carnage, listening to the screams and splats. It’s all very grim and all very much overshadowed by the silliness of the plot.

But don’t worry, dear readers, Maggie is here now and she is a Strong Female Character™ who doesn’t mess around and surely, somehow, she will save the day. Yawn.

I’m not sure what show we’re watching, folks, but it sure doesn’t feel like The Walking Dead to me.

If I were a Commonwealth official trying to salvage a secret operation without my boss finding out what I was doing, I wouldn’t send two people I barely trust and a kid with no specific military training to carry it out, knowing that each of them would be surprised and quite possibly disgusted by the betrayal and ensuing violence.

“They’ll fall in line, they always do,” Hornsby tells Carlson. Really? They always do? You send unsuspecting newcomers from other communities on black ops missions like this on the regular or something? What a stupid line.

How does New Guy—who is shot in the back by a Commonwealth soldier—find his way to Alexandria? Even with a map, this seems wildly unlikely. Aaron also gets away and manages to run into Maggie less than a day later on the exact road she happens to be traveling down. The Negan stuff, ugh. Just atrocious writing.

Carlson, played by Jason Butler Hamer, and Ian were both fun, off-the-wall characters but they were saddled with a story that was too convoluted by half. sI like both Aaron and Gabriel these days, but they had no business being on this mission to begin with, and their presence really bogged the rest of the episode down.

What did you think? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook and support my work on Patreon. If you want, you can also sign up for my diabolical newsletter on Substack and subscribe to my YouTube channel.