The Walking Dead: Dead City Recap: “Everybody Wins a Prize”

The Sanctuary. Years ago. The Croat (Željko Ivanek) has broken a girl he says was sent by the Kingdom, disobeying a direct order to let her walk. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Simon (Steven Ogg) see the bloody results of the Croat’s “process” — a process that found the location of a hidden arms cache at the Hilltop. A process in which a girl is strapped to a chair, leaking blood, with wounds to her hands, feet, throat, and head. Simon reminds the “Slavic, psychopathic nutjob” that “kids is a line we do not cross.”

The Croat appeals to his buraz, his “brother,” Negan, with a smile and a shrug. This is the “too far” that told Negan the Croat was “a rabid dog that needed to be put down.” As he told Maggie (Lauren Cohan), “I had one shot. One. I missed. Blew off his ear. The rest of him got away. Haven’t seen or heard from him since.” Until now.

In the present, Negan, Maggie, Amaia (Karina Ortiz), and Tommaso (Jonathan Higginbotham) group up to ready their attack on the Croat’s Sanctuary. No one can find Luther (Michael Anthony) — who died in a kitchen skirmish with Negan — so it’s figured he bailed. Negan quickly packs Luther’s tin of beeswax in his bag. 

Negan confesses to Maggie that he’s not ready to face the Croat. “It just starts to feel a bit too goddamn familiar. Like, if he starts talkin’, it won’t be him at all. It’s gonna be the echo of some song that I don’t wanna hear no more,” Negan admits. Maggie is reminded of a time when her son, Hershel, was a baby. A man named Amos lived above them and played the harmonica, even at night. When talking to him didn’t work, Maggie confesses, “The next time he was out on a hunting expedition, I snuck into his room. I stole the harmonica, and I went and buried it in the f—ing ground.” 

With a chuckle, Negan bets Maggie “lost a couple Girl Scout badges for that.” She counters: “Yeah, but I’m sure you would’ve buried it somewhere way worse.” He asks if she’s seen his matchbook. She lies.

On the streets of New York, Maggie and Negan move out with Amaia and Tommaso’s tribe. The sewers are bubbling with methane. As they head into the subway, no one notices Ginny (Mahina Napoleon) trailing behind.

The group treks through the zombie-littered tracks of the long-abandoned subway to reach old Penn Station, which will give them entry to the Croat’s new Sanctuary: Madison Square Garden. Making their way through deserted prisoner cells, Maggie desperately checks each room, finding nothing but empty chairs and blood-splattered walls. At the end of the hall, Maggie steps into a fresh trail of blood on the floor.

The prisoner is a young boy, black hair, his head slumped downward. Blood pours from his hands and feet. Negan checks the zombified boy… “It’s not him.” Maggie breathes. It’s not Hershel. It’s not her son. But it’s someone’s kid, so Negan puts him to rest with a knife stab to the brain.

They make a plan: Maggie will steal a car while Negan baits the Croat down to the garage. As Maggie and Negan lure the Croat halfway across the city, Amaia and her people will take out the Burazi. “You get your kid. We kill the psycho. Everybody wins a prize.” 

Maggie and Negan make their way into the bowels of the arena. Pocketing Negan’s matches, she asks if he’s figured out how he’s going to bait the Croat into showing himself. Negan’s confident their plan will work. “We’re gonna get your boy back.” She’s about to tell him about Ginny’s dinosaur when she sees it: Luther’s can of beeswax in Negan’s bag. 

He tries to explain, but Maggie rebuffs him. “Don’t act like you’ve never did something you need to explain,” Negan tells her, but they don’t have time to get into what Negan did to Luther. 

Inside the arena, Negan draws the Croat out with a whistle. The Savior whistle. While that’s happening, Maggie hotwires a cab inside the garage to make a quick getaway. But when she spots Ginny prowling nearby, Maggie goes after the girl and they wind up on the arena floor, where Amaia’s people expected to find the Croat’s Burazi. 

As Negan reaches the garage, the Croat whistles back. Suddenly, the arena comes alive with lights and the music of his homeland: “Proplakat Ce Zora.” Canisters explode at the arena entrances, turning it into a death trap as a horde of walkers flood inside. 

There’s no way out. Every exit is swarming with the dead. The hunters have become the prey. Wielding melee weapons — Maggie’s chained belt, wrenches, blades — the survivors fight their way through the horde, but not everyone makes it out alive. People are pulled apart and devoured. As Maggie slices her way through the crowd, a walker grabs Amaia and almost bites her, but she fends it off. Tommaso is surrounded and disappears in the throng of walkers. Back in the garage, Negan evades the Burazi’s search, but he’s spotted by the Croat. 

In the arena, Maggie, Amaia, and the Scavenger Woman (Aixa Kendrick) lock themselves in the cage with Ginny. Using a trick Maggie learned back when clearing the prison fences, the women stab the walkers pressed against the cage. It’s not going to hold. The foursome rips the padded panels from the arena cage and falls in tight. They move as one in Spartan formation, making their way through the horde and spearing walker brains as they advance toward an exit. The Scavenging Woman is ripped away and eaten alive, and it’s a fate that almost befalls Amaia — until she’s saved by Tommaso, who leads the three survivors out of the arena.

On the rafters above, the Croat catches up to Negan, who is met with an unexpected reaction: Joy. “Negan! My brother! Buraz!” the Croat beams, laughing off his blown-off ear. (“So what? I have another!”) He explains that a former Savior, Jerome, told him about the war with the Hilltop, Kingdom, and Alexandria that ended with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) ending Negan’s rule. “I should have been there. I can only imagine the damage Simon caused. He never really listened to you,” the Croat says. “It’s okay you lost the Sanctuary, ’cause I have built a new one. And we’ll keep going. We’ll build something bigger, stronger! The whole island will become our sanctuary, fuelled by the death in its bowels.”

Negan demands to see the Croat’s prisoner… and is surprised to see Marshal Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles) instead of Hershel. The Croat presents Negan’s pursuer as a gift before making a gesture to show he’s acting “in the spirit of friendship and brotherly love.” The Croat chucks Armstrong over the walkway and onto the platform below. Rather than let the lawman fall to his death, Negan helps him up, and they escape together.

Down below, Maggie, Ginny, Amaia, and Tommaso head down into their only route of escape: the sewers that Amaia warned are filled with the dead and methane gas. Tommaso descends a ladder into the sewer, with Amaia and Ginny trailing behind. Maggie nods, signaling to the girl that it’s okay. She’s right behind them.Maggie blocks the cover behind her as much as she can and goes down the ladder, disappearing into the pitch black darkness. 

Elsewhere, Negan and a limping Armstrong hole up in a shoe repair shop. Negan thinks they’re in this together, but Armstrong has his gun trained on the fugitive. He cites the codes Negan violated under New Babylon law: “Code 14, Section 2. Intentional killing shall be defined as first degree murder and shall be punishable by supplementary execution. Times five.” For the crime of murdering a magistrate and four other men, Negan’s going to be put to death without trial. But not without what just might be his last words: “You’re a dick.”

New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD and follow @CameronBonomolo and @NewsOfTheDead on Twitter for more TWD Universe coverage.