The sun has long since set by the time the cars and RVs ramble back into Alexandria to find a somber Rosita at the gate. She says nothing about Sasha's whereabouts, but instead tells Rick, Michonne, Tara and the rest that they have company. That company turns out to be the man in the shadows in last week's episode: Dwight. He wants to help, he says.
While he may be Negan's bootleg version of Daryl, Dwight has never been the duplicitous type. Everything he's ever done on the show was for Sherry, wherever she is. So you can't blame Rick for considering the proposal—until he cocks his gun and points it squarely at Dwight.
"Okay," Rick says. "Get on your knees."
The powers that be at The Walking Dead may love a good bait-and-switch (looking at you, Dumpster Glenn Arc), but the plot device depends on restraint: deploying it more than once in a season just makes everything feel less trustworthy, more hollow. And it certainly doesn't help "Something They Need" feel less flat while on the slow march to next week's season finale and its inevitable war. Penultimate episodes don't need to feel flat—but AMC's juggernaut refuses to learn that fact. Instead, it's an episode of preparation, stockpiling. Rick and the Gang finally head out to Oceanside to get guns; Maggie gardens.
Meanwhile, Sasha's mission into Neganland has clearly landed like a Paul Ryan health-care bill. The good news is that it wasn't strictly a kamikaze mission: she's captured and thrown in a cell. The bad news is that her jailer is Rapey Davey, a Savior who keeps rope in his pockets and has the look of a man with an external hard drive of scared-looking anime characters. He offers Sasha water in return for sexual favors. Sasha, echoing Maggie's words to the Governor seasons ago, tells him to go to hell—chances are he's heading there anyway, but still, this only excites him. He rips Sasha's shirt, telling her that struggling will only make it last longer.
The Walking Dead is no stranger to sexual violence. Unlike certain shows with dragons, though, it's somehow not gratuitous. This is a chronicle of extremity, of what happens when the social contract crumbles and blows away; if people like Rapey Davey survive that dissolution, of course they'd try to do rapey things. Luckily for Sasha (and my second-hand anxiety), Rapey Davey is interrupted by Negan, making this the first time since he sauntered onto the show that I've actually been happy to see the guy.
Negan may be a bat-waving demagogue who loves disfiguring people almost as much as he loves talking like a spoken-word poet, but even he has a line. That line is rape. And Rapey Davey, like the good doctor and Dwight before him, learns that you only get to cross Negan once. After dispatching the creep, Negan leaves Sasha with a knife and three options: She can kill herself; she can wait for Rapey Davey to reanimate and eat her; or she can put the knife through the corpse's skull and join Negan. After all, he's down a man, and good soldiers are hard to find.
The ultimatum does more than just provide fodder for the hundreds of tumblrs that fetishize "Daddy Negan." (Also, stop doing that. It's gross.) It shows the futility of a charismatic leader who plays on fear rather than the hope of a better future. Negan may think that he's saving the world, but the same can't necessarily be said of his followers. Men like Dave and Jared don't want to build a better world. They don't care about saving anyone from the horrors they've faced; they want to impose those horrors on someone else, to make up for however they think the world has slighted them. That doesn't make a better world—just a world full of people who are just as broken and bitter as they are.
In other news, as predicted previously, those very potent ZzzQuil pills meant for Negan finally make their return. (Now that I know I have The Sight, I'm also available for tarot readings!) Aware of the fact that, no matter what, she will be used to hurt her friends, Sasha begs Eugene for a way out—a knife, a piece of glass, a gun, anything. He complies, but whether Sasha really means to check out of Hotel Negan early or if she's just trying to get a weapon remains unclear.
And honestly, this episode teases so many possible resolutions that it's hard to get excited about any of them. It's not just Sasha's plan—it's whether Tara's Oceanside friends will come to her aid, or how Gregory's stock will fare now that we know he's not a stone killer. For the love of catharsis, can we just fight already?
