It's safe to say that Maggie hasn't wasted any time at the Hilltop. Between adopting Enid, teaching colonists how to throw knives (be still my heart), facilitating the manufacture of new weapons and staying up to date on her OB/GYN visits (baby Gleggie isn't even here and it's already messing with my emotions), she's too busy to be sad. That's probably for the best. Maggie has cemented herself as the de facto leader of HIlltop and unofficial Colony Mom™— which is why I worry so much for her when Rosita shows up with her half-assed revenge pitch for Sasha.
"The Other Side" isn't The Walking Dead's first foray into non-linear storytelling, but here it's employed with a much higher degree of care than Glenn's flashback death in season 7's infamous premiere. That's a welcome change; up to this point, the revolution has been teased week by week, gathering momentum. Change has been slow, if seemingly inevitable. However, with the changing rhythm of this week's episode, it's looking like the Saviors will meet their inevitable fate not by drowning in slowly rising waters, but in a single cataclysmic tsunami: sudden, violent, and completely inescapable.
And if Maggie is the "mom" of Hilltop, Gregory is certainly the deadbeat dad, showing up late to birthday parties smelling like bottom-shelf well liquor and leaving them unsupervised in mall daycare for hours on end. Also neglected: his spine, which is nowhere to be found when the Saviors arrive, unannounced, to collect Hilltop's only doctor to replace their own primary care physician (RIP, Doc—say hi to the furnace for us). But Simon, who looks like he was probably banned from a TGI Fridays for exposing himself, is not an unreasonable man. In exchange for the good doctor, Hilltop will receive...a giant case of Dollar Tree aspirin!
Might this pointless show of force prompt Gregory to open his big dumb mouth (upon which he almost definitely uses aggressively gendered chapstick) and rat out the Hilltoppers to Negan? Probably. Away from both Saviors and colonists, Gregory implies to Simon that this snatch-and-grab play might make the Hilltop folks throw their weight behind another leader—one who might not be such a pissbaby about standing up to Negan's grimy fraternity. What sounded like a slick threat to Gregory, who very clearly thinks of himself as the Don Draper of Hilltop, comes off instead as a weak cry for the Saviors to throw their muscle behind his leadership. Simon assures him that he would be happy to help—provided Gregory were to show the proper respect, bring a bottle of tequila and, most importantly, "no shenanigans" (which sounds like another bar Simon is no longer welcome in).
For all the zombies and psychopaths in The Walking Dead, this calm exchange between two able-bodied men with button-down shirts and receding hairlines is somehow the most chilling. Simon and Gregory are, by all accounts, normal people. They likely worked "normal" jobs before the fall and did "normal" things, but here they are, discussing murder as though they're scheduling rehearsal for their classic-rock cover band. The big bad of the Walking Dead universe isn't Negan or any other Batman villain reject Robert Kirkman can dream up—it's what humans will do to other humans when hardship outpaces empathy.
The bright side of all of this, however, is that Gregory makes a better distraction than he does a leader. During his lengthy exchange with Simon, Daryl and Maggie manage to sneak away from the Saviors' prying eyes by hiding in the secret compartment of a cellar. (Apparently all of Hilltop's security measures were taken from old episodes of Scooby-Doo.) The cramped quarters and close call do, however, prompt Daryl and Maggie to address the handsome, baseball-cap-wearing ghost in the room: Glenn. While it's clear that Daryl's presence reminds Maggie of uncomfortable things, she doesn't hold him responsible for Glenn's death—not that anyone would blame the pregnant widow for lashing out at the nearest, most culpable person. It's clear that Maggie has her head in the game and can see beyond her own pain to become the leader Deanna saw in her so long ago.
Despite the Saviors' unannounced (and frankly, unwelcome) visit, Sasha and Rosita have managed to evade their oppressors and set off on a buddy road-trip comedy that forgot to be funny. Rosita is angry, as we all know, and refuses to let her rage die a natural death—instead choosing to pick and snip at Sasha. Sasha performs admirably as the "bigger person," but it isn't lost on me that these two beautiful, strong women are fighting over an older redheaded cigar smoker who wore undershirts out in public like that was a totally acceptable thing to do.
Eventually the tension simmers down, though, and the two ladies open up to each other, commiserating over unfair gender politics that even Walkers can't seem to do away with. Rosita's ex-boyfriends underestimated her and wanted to protect her instead of facing the world together, she says; Abraham was different. This is why his death weighed on her the way it did: Guilt. She was so busy being angry at Abraham that she never got to tell him that she was happy for his happiness—and now she never can.
"It wasn't his time," they assure each other, echoing a thought shared by anyone who has ever lost someone they cared about: somewhere, someone flipped a switch and threw you into an alternate timeline that exists somewhere beyond reason. A person you thought you would have forever is suddenly gone, and yet the world is still full of people who don't deserve a long and happy life nearly as much as your loved one did. Or, as Sasha says earlier in the episode, "It's a long life. And then it isn't."
Perhaps that's what prompts Sasha to infiltrate the Saviors' compound despite Rosita's insistence that the life given to end Negan should be her own. The odds are steep. Between Gregory's brown-nosing, Eugene's refusal to leave Negan's watchful gaze, and the mysterious figure in the shadows Rosita faces, the road to freedom won't be smooth—but at least the television will be interesting.
