"Who's There?" is the second episode of the first season of AMC's The Walking Dead: Dead City. It is the second episode of the series overall. It premiered on June 25, 2023. It was written by Eli Jorné and directed by Loren Yaconelli.
Plot[]
Maggie and Negan encounter native New Yorkers; Armstrong revisits a trauma; Ginny attempts to adapt to change.
Synopsis[]
Walkers try to break into the room where Maggie and Negan are hiding, all of their stuff having been stolen by Esther. The two escape through a hole in the celling and follow Esther to where she's climbing an elevator shaft. A walker falls into a pile at the bottom of the shaft and Negan quips to Maggie that "it's just a ball of fun hangin' out with you, ain't it?" Maggie and Negan climb the ladder after Esther who escapes to another building using a zipline, impressing Negan. Much to their surprise, Esther sends the hook back to them and tells Maggie and Negan to follow her. The two zipline across, Maggie narrowly avoiding the walkers overrunning the building. The same music that they heard before suddenly begins playing and Maggie gets stuck near the other end of the zipline, dangling over the walker-infested streets of Manhattan. Maggie makes it the rest of the way across after rejecting Negan's help and they head inside of the building that they've reached.
Nina brings Ginny to the Bricks, a series of buildings set in a large rural area. Ginny takes special notice of one of the residents climbing a grain silo. Mr. Aizawa introduces Ginny to a class full of kids, telling them that Ginny is coming to them from Oceanside and will be joining their class from now on. The class reacts with muted enthusiasm to the news and instructs Ginny to take a seat as he goes into foraging.
Maggie and Negan climb in through a window and find Esther in a large room going through their stuff. Although Maggie protests her actions, Negan lets her keep something and Esther offers them some food in trade. Negan asks the old woman to take them to the building where the smoke is coming from, but she protests in Hebrew which Negan guesses translates into "hell freaking no." Negan tells Maggie that they can either go back or see how things play out with Esther, but if they go back, the only thing waiting for them is a herd and a marshal's bullet. Maggie reluctantly concedes, and Esther beckons them to follow her.
In Big J Cleaners, Perlie awakens and spots his rifle across the floor and walkers wandering the room. Perlie prepares to go after his gun, but a zombified Gritz walks past it, causing Perlie to change his mind. As walkers continue to move around the laundromat, Perlie looks again at the envelope with Joel Armstrong's Manhattan address.
Esther leads Maggie and Negan down some stairs where Amaia and Tommaso aim modified nail guns at them, while Esther tries to defuse the situation. Negan immediately disarms himself followed by Maggie reluctantly while Amaia and Tommaso argue about how the old woman keeps bringing back people for them to take in. "I am guessing they are not with the Croat," comments Maggie which Negan sarcastically agrees with. Negan interrupts the argument, acknowledging that they don't know each other and they might not be friendly, but he doubts that Esther has brought them all of this way to get killed.
Tommaso claims that there's thousands of them and they own this city, but Amaia asks what they're after, pointing out that it's pretty obvious that Maggie and Negan aren't from around here. Maggie claims that they were heading up north to a settlement in Canada when their boat washed them ashore in Manhattan during a storm and they're just here to get supplies and get on their way again. However, Amaia doesn't believe Maggie's story and Esther argues with her as Tommaso disarms the two. Tommaso leads Maggie and Negan through the Manhattan Tribespeople's hideout, has Luther search through Maggie's bag and, much to Negan's annoyance, locks them in an old bathroom.
At the Bricks, Nina tries to help Ginny get settled in, empathizing with her being in a strange place with strange people and promising that the people might end up being like family to Ginny someday. Nina encourages Ginny to eat, and tells the girl to come find her if she needs anything. However, an upset Ginny just covers her legs in Negan's jacket and cries.
In a flashback, Maggie enters Hershel's room and admonishes him for missing weapons' training again where Lane brought out the bo staffs. This is the third time this month that Hershel has skipped training, and Maggie tries to emphasize how important it is to be ready at all times. More interested in drawing, Hershel dismissively tells his mother that he's got it, but Maggie warns her son that it's not a joke and that people could come at you with anything. "Then I guess I'd be dead," Hershel morbidly quips. Maggie compliments one of Hershel's drawings, but he crumples it up, tells Maggie that it sucks and leaves to go to Xander's, much to Maggie's dismay who picks up Hershel's drawing.
In the present, Negan points out that they didn't have much of a choice but to surrender as Amaia's people had guns, meaning that they would've been killed if they fought back. While Maggie thinks that they could've taken them and not been locked up, Negan is sure that they're here because of Maggie's obvious lie, suggesting that they should've told them the truth so that both sides would give a little. Negan acknowledges that right or wrong, these people had their reasons for locking Maggie and Negan up which Negan thinks makes them useful for manpower and information. Maggie points out that Negan was supposed to be the source of information, but so far, he's been pretty tight-lipped about the Croat.
An emotional Negan finally explains that "right around the time that the world turned into shit soup, the Croat showed up at my door so to speak. He had been through... well, let's just say he had been through some really bad shit. Worst shit imaginable. So, I took him in. Kept him from brain painting the walls. Pretty soon he was calling me his brother, Buraz. Said that I made him feel safe. I guess at that point everyone was looking for a little sanctuary from the hellfire we'd all been damned to, I mean we'd lost everything. The thing is, I um, I really thought I was helping him." Maggie guesses that it takes a monster to make one, but Negan corrects her that "you see, I was only a monster when I absolutely had to be. When I had to put on a show to protect my people. Anyway, the... the Croat he had a way of uh... reading people. And then toying with them, and pulling them apart. When a threat needed to be handled, it was a skillset that I found very useful." Maggie realizes that the Croat was Negan's torturer, but Negan admits that "he took it too far. It was um... one of our first skirmishes with the Kingdom, before your time. A person had holed up in a car a couple of miles from the Sanctuary. It seemed to me she was a drifter, nothing to do with us or anything we were up to. So, I gave a direct order: let her walk. The Croat, he... he saw it differently. Thought that the... thought that she had beans to spill. And he was right: she was a... a scout. At least that's what she copped to before uh... before he... She was just a kid. So, after that, I knew that he was a rabid dog that needed to be put down. I had one shot. One. I missed. Blew off his ear, the rest of him got away. I haven't seen or heard from him since. Until now, of course." Maggie realizes that this means that the Croat is going to want to kill Negan which he confirms. Maggie is angry that Negan didn't tell her this before, but Negan points out that he does know how the Croat operates.
Perlie makes his way to Joel's Apartment and breaks through the locked door, blocking the hole with a dresser after hearing the growls of walkers nearby. In the kitchen, Perlie finds a lot of empty food cans scattered around, suggesting that Joel had run out of food at some point and drug paraphernalia on the stove. In the dust-covered living room, Perlie finds a picture of himself and Joel who is revealed to be his brother and an empty gun case. Looking at a picture of himself and Joel with their parents, Perlie spots a body in the bedroom behind him in the mirror. Perlie finds Joel dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, having presumably committed suicide after running out of supplies and being left to face starvation. Perlie sadly covers his brother's body with a sheet and lays Joel's rosary beads on top of it. Taking Joel's loaded gun, Perlie goes to leave, but finds walkers trying to get through the door. Perlie climbs out of the window and down a ladder, but he gets caught in a net.
At the hideout, Maggie and Negan hear a lot of panicked shouting and Tommaso grabs them, accusing the two of being responsible. Amaia's people are frantically packing up because the Burazi are coming, and Tommaso believes that Maggie and Negan led them to the hideout, wanting to kill them for it. Negan tries to calm the situation down, telling Amaia that they aren't with the Burazi and arguing Tommaso before holding a sharpened pigeon bone to his throat, threatening to kill Tommaso with it before releasing him and reiterating that he and Maggie are here to help them. As vehicles pull up outside, Amaia returns Maggie and Negan's belongings and weapons. Maggie suggests that they should wait if this is the Croat's people, but Negan knows that it's a bad idea if the Burazi have the jump on them.
Several Burazi, armed with makeshift metal spears, enter the hideout and Maggie and Negan quickly hide. A Buraz comes close to finding them, but he heads off after another survivor that runs past instead. Climbing the stairs, the two find one of Amaia's people dead, a Burazi spear through her chest and Amaia's people fighting a few more, the bodies of another of their people and a dead Buraz lying on the ground. Amaia uses her nail gun, which fires a grappling line, to yank out a piece of a Buraz's chest, severely wounding him, while Luther snaps the neck of another Buraz. Stopping Amaia, Maggie finishes off the wounded Buraz herself with a vicious stomp to his neck.
On the roof, the surviving group members prepare to make their escape, but one Buraz takes Esther hostage. As Negan tries to talk the man down, he keeps muttering "doma smo," before suddenly stabbing Esther in the chest, killing her to everyone's horror, before Negan finally subdues the man by slamming him headfirst into a beam. Cradling Esther's body, Tommaso - who up until this point has seemed to only be a hot-headed angry survivor - breaks down crying, before stabbing Esther in the head in order to keep her from reanimating. Negan instructs everyone else to make their escape across the ziplines while he deals with the captured Buraz. However, Maggie follows Negan back inside.
As more Burazi arrive, Negan slams his captive's head through several glass windows, calling out "knock, knock" and holding a knife to the man's throat over the hideout's second floor balcony. Watched by Maggie, Negan makes fun of one of the Burazi before going into one of his taunting speeches. "Knock, knock. Who's there? Butter. Butter who? Well, you butter get out your umbrellas, 'cause it is about to goddamn rain." Negan slits his captive's throat, splashing the people below with his blood, and then brutally disembowels him, shaking more blood over the Burazi. "Now, I don't know if any of you have checked tonight's forecast, but if I see even one mole hair on one of your ugly ass faces, it won't be just a rainstorm. Hell, it won't be a thunderstorm. It'll be a goddamn hurricane!" Negan flings the body over the balcony, dropping him on the Neckbeard Buraz below. Maggie and Negan exchange a look before they flee from the hideout.
That night, at the Bricks, Ginny is unable to sleep, and she still hasn't eaten the sandwich that Nina made her. Getting up, Ginny packs her bag, distracts the guard, steals a motorcycle and she leaves after staring at the grain silo again for a long moment.
In another building, Negan removes the glass from his hand while Amaia and her people mourn their losses, a devastated Tommaso in particular. Amaia and Tommaso thank Maggie and Negan for their help and Tommaso admits that he was lying about there being thousands of them out there. His voice breaking, Tommaso reveals that "those people we lost... that's it. That's our family. We've been going that way a long time." Amaia states that they'd return the favor, but there's no supplies here for Maggie and Negan's trip to Canada: whatever's left has already been taken by somebody else. Tommaso's sure that it doesn't matter and that their boat has already been sunk and you get on the island, but you don't get off because the Burazi and their psycho leader make sure of that. With a look at Negan, Maggie finally admits the truth, that they're in Manhattan because the Croat has her son. "So you wanna get to the psycho? That we can help you with. You know, if you're looking to die." reveals Amaia.
Perlie continues to struggle in his net as four walkers surround him. The Croat drives up with two Burazi and uses the spikes on his helmet to put down the walkers with headbutts. The Croat has Perlie cut down and, after disarming the marshal, tells him with a laugh "don't worry. You're safe now." As the Croat leaves, the Burazi drag Perlie away.
Other Cast[]
Co-Stars[]
- Eleanor Reissa as Esther
- Pallavi Sastry as Nina
- David Chen as Gritz
- John Wu as Mr. Aizawa
- Matthew R. Staley as Buraz
- Hedley Harlan as Skinny Buraz
- Alan J. Paratore as Neckbeard Buraz
- Caleb Reese Paul as Wesley
Uncredited[]
- Jenna D. Hellmuth as Tribeswoman
- Randy Gonzalez as Tribesman
- Saint Marino as Manhattan Survivor
- Prop/Unknown as Joel Armstrong (Corpse/Photograph)
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Deaths[]
- Joel Armstrong (Confirmed Fate)
- Esther
- Buraz 2
- At least 2 unnamed tribespeople
- At least 3 unnamed Burazi
Trivia[]
- First appearance of the Bricks.
- First appearance of Mr. Aizawa.
- First appearance of Wesley.
- First appearance of Tommaso.
- First appearance of Amaia.
- First appearance of Luther.
- First appearance of Joel Armstrong. (Corpse/Photograph)
- Last appearance of Gritz. (Zombified)
- Last appearance of Esther.
- The title of the episode, "Who's There?", refers to Negan's sadistic knock knock joke which includes "who's there?" as a part of it.
- This episode was made available for streaming to subscribers of AMC Premiere on June 22, 2023.
- Oceanside is mentioned by Mr. Aizawa, confirming that it survived and is still in contact with the Bricks.
- During the premiere of this episode, a sneak peek was shown for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.
- One of the extras who portrayed a Tribesman also portrayed a member of the Governor's group in Season 4 of The Walking Dead.
Episode Highlights[]
TBA
| Season 1 | "Old Acquaintances" • "Who's There?" • "People Are a Resource" • "Everybody Wins a Prize" • "Stories We Tell Ourselves" • "Doma Smo" |
|---|---|
| Season 2 | TBA |
| Episode Guide: TV Series • Fear • World Beyond • Tales • Daryl Dixon • The Ones Who Live • Webisodes | |