The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 2 Moment That Went Too Far
Contains spoilers for Season 11, Episode 2 of "The Walking Dead"
Episode 2 of "The Walking Dead" Season 11 contains the first major death of the season. It's not major because of who died, but it's major because of the savage way the character died. It's the kind of classic, brutal "TWD" moment where you're like "all right, that went a little too far."
In the previous episode, "Acheron: Part I," Gage (Jackson Pace) and Roy (C. Thomas Howell) went AWOL from Maggie's (Lauren Cohan) salvage team in the subway tunnels under Washington D.C. In "Acheron: Part II," Gage comes back after the rest of the team has taken shelter in a subway car.
He's managed to get inside the next car on the train and is banging on the door of the survivors' car, begging to be let in. Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) asks Gage if he closed the door he went in through at the other end of the car, and he gets his answer when the car starts filling up with walkers. Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Alden (Callan McAuliffe) want to let him in, but Maggie says no, because she doesn't want the walkers to get into their car.
Gage pleads for his life, apologizing for what he did, while the walkers are closing in. But despite Alden's protestations, Maggie is firm in her decision. She's not happy to be condemning Gage to death, but she feels she has to in order to protect herself and the others. She looks Gage dead in his eyes and tells him she can't open the door.
Gage ain't going out like that
Gage's face contorts with hatred, and he calls her a liar. Then he pulls out two big knives from his pockets and stabs himself twice in the heart, while holding eye contact with Maggie. As he dies, the walkers reach him and start to tear him apart. And we see it all, as the walkers rip his chest open and feast on his insides.
It's a really brutal death, physically and emotionally. Maggie shows how much she's hardened from the person she used to be. The old Maggie probably wouldn't have been able to make such a cold and calculated decision to let a member of her community die when there was even a chance he could have been saved — and make no mistake, the walkers were moving slowly enough that Gage may have been able to be saved if Maggie had allowed it. But she wasn't going to put other people at risk to help him. The fact that he's a deserter isn't why she chose to let him die, but it didn't help his case.
Adding to the harshness is the fact that Maggie had a similar thing happen to her moments before this. Negan chose not to help her get into the subway car, while walkers were closing in. You might think she would be a little more compassionate toward Gage since she barely escaped her own abandonment, but Maggie is a hard case now.
The scene went too far in the brutal way fans love to see on "The Walking Dead."