The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2 recap “Who’s There”

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1 episode 2 picks up right where episode 1 left off, with Maggie and Negan chasing an old lady who swiped their stuff. What happens when they catch up to her?

Meanwhile, audiences get some backstory to Perlie, who may or may not have just found the worst ally. Let’s get started!

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2 recap – Friends or foes?

Maggie and Negan chase the nimble old woman through the building and to a window where we get to see just how the survivors in The Big Apple get around: ziplining. Ever the gentlemen and easy going, Negan offers for Maggie to go first, but when she declines, he’s more than overjoyed to give it a shot.

Maggie struggles to follow, both scared of the leap and of the approaching walkers. The two eventually catch up with the old woman who doesn’t speak English but kindly provides them their stuff and a pigeon meal.

Negan happily accepts the food and tries to make efforts to communicate with her, whereas Maggie wants to stop delaying and keep moving. Unfortunately for them, the old woman is part of a group that is far less friendly to strangers.

Fearing the duo are working with a bad group who keeps robbing them, hot headed Tomasso and unsure Amaia, essentially lock them inside a bathroom. Unfortunately, the old woman’s pleas explaining how Negan and Maggie aren’t bad guys in her own language, go unheard.

However, this is the ideal time for Negan to actually talk to Maggie, one on one, without rage or anxiousness.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2 recap – The Croat’s history

While Negan still keeps the fate of Annie and his child a secret, he does indulge in Maggie’s curiosity into who The Croat is. Long story short, it seems when Negan was first in charge of The Sanctuary, he met The Croat.

He did not foresee the cruel and essentially inhuman man he was until they went out on a run and encountered a woman they feared was spying for another community. Although Negan doesn’t go into detail as to what happened, it’s obvious The Croat tortured and killed her.

Fearing the man The Croat was, Negan tries but fails to kill him and hadn’t seen him since. For some reason, we’re thinking there is more to this story and Negan’s history with The Croat, but for now we’ll take it.

Speaking of The Croat, we get to spend more time with the mentally unhinged man as we see him trying to get more information out of Hershel, before witnessing one of Maggie’s people from The Hilltop trying to escape. The Croat doesn’t seem the least bit concerned at the escapee; in fact, he finds the whole scene amusing.

The bloodied and beaten man tries to find a way to escape from the rooftops, using the zipline as his last resort. However, he doesn’t quite make it to the other side of the long commute, before The Croat has the line cut and the man falls to his death.

The Croat is easily established as someone we wouldn’t be surprised was or could have become a serial killer in the real world, if the zombie apocalypse didn’t happen. Elsewhere in the walker ridden city, Perlie is awake and alive.

He manages to evade the walkers and find an address he had written on a piece of folded paper. The apartment appears to be in pretty good condition, that is, until Perlie tries to find weapons.

Sadly, for him, the show is implying that the dead body of man in the other room is that of his brother, who had taken his own life at some point. Perlie is saddened but keep his emotions intact, taking the gun and managing to leave before walkers emerge from the apartment door he busted open.

Outside New York City, Ginny is slowly welcomed in the new Hilltop community, where she is almost immediately ignored by fellow children her age. Remaining silent and unreadable, she is shown the area and given a safe place to stay.

The place looks nice enough, with some of the people really trying to make an effort. But as night falls, Ginny decides to pack her stuff and leave.

She easily evades security tossing some rocks to make a sound and then make her escape. She’s undoubtedly leaving to find Negan, terrified to lose another important figure in her life and a father figure no less.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2 recap – Old Negan returns

While Negan reminisces his regretful connection to The Croat, Maggie’s own connection to her son is rough to say the least. Hershel is now a teenager and aside from the usual mood swings, he’s feeling disconnected from her.

It seems Maggie cannot forget the horrible memories of Negan brutally murdering her husband and she fears for her own son. Outside of characters she had come to grow and love on The Walking Dead, Maggie remains hesitant and cautious around others.

Perhaps she doesn’t want to be caught off guard again, however her overprotectiveness is angering her son and damaging their relationship. She and Negan are disrupted when it turns out the group Tomasso and Amaia feared would return, does so.

As the group manages to pack what they can and escape, we see firsthand the effective weapons the duo have when dealing with their enemies. However, all of their hard work fails when the old woman is held captive by one of the men.

This violent group works for The Croat, wearing trench coats and weaponized motorcycle helmets. Negan tries to calm the man, but he kills the old woman, speaking in a language similar to hers.

Angered, Negan decides to take matters into his own hands. Allowing the others to escape he takes the man, now slightly conscious and makes a scene before the whole group below.

He slits the man’s throat and cuts him open, using this terrorizing tactic to scare off the group, much like he had done in the past. Maggie witnesses the entire event and is able to convey an expression that emotes several emotions all at once.

One in particular really stood out to me but I won’t say which. With the threat gone, Maggie and Negan finally come clean as to why they are in the city.

Tomasso and Amaia agree to help them with their mission. The episode comes to a close on Perlie, as he’s walking about the city and completely misses the obvious sign of a trap.

Once again, we see the white painted rabbit and Perlie finds him hoisted into a net. At night as walkers try to eat him, a group of the helmeted villains arrive to kill the walkers.

Naturally one of them is The Croat who frees Perlie, leaving the audiences wondering if the two are going to team up due to their shared interest in Negan.

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2 review

This was the second and last episode I was able to watch ahead of time at the Tribeca Film Festival and it was every ounce of incredible! While some of the city shots were a little difficult to decipher if it was Newark or Paterson, NJ, Tomasso and Amaia’s community was filmed in Weehawken, NJ.

This was the set I was able to walk up on and see after filming concluded and I was told of the violent Negan scene of killing the man above the bad guys. Again, for those of you who let me in on the set and told me all of that, thank you so much!

Watching the scene itself unfold was way worse than I imagined it would be however, the scene in particular was important for several reasons. The biggest, and one that will probably be discussed the most is, is Negan’s immediate action to handle the situation.

Like clockwork, he was able to transform himself into old Negan with perfect flair and precision. The entire theater adored this scene, and it really puts his character in the spotlight.

Negan has changed, he’s become better but even he knows there will be times where he must become his old self for the sake of others. He could has easily killed the man or even allowed Maggie to handle it, but he didn’t.

He took it upon himself to do this so that they and especially Maggie, didn’t have to. There is no doubt Maggie will be seeing yet another side of Negan than she’s used to.

Will this bring them closer to becoming actual friends or at least allies? Speaking of friends, are we going to be seeing a team up between Perlie and The Croat?

Possibly. As dangerous and bad as this is for Negan, I’m looking forward to all the fallout this will cause, as long as Ginny and Hershel remain safe.

Oh, and on one last note, the day they filmed Negan brutally killing the man, I witnessed all the cleaning supplies the crew had to use, the remnants of the fake blood on Jeffrey’s hands as they had a lunch break not long after and overall, Jeffrey’s concentration and focus with the script. Every time I saw him outside the building, he was obsessing and studying that script.

True dedication.

What did you think of The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1, episode 2? Let us know in the comments below!

The Walking Dead: Dead City season 1 episode 3 airs on July 2 on AMC.