TWD 10x21 "Diverged" episode discussion... **SPOILERS**

[MinionZombie]

Please keep all talk of episode 10x21 "Diverged" specifically inside this thread. If you have a theory for a following episode, please use the "spoiler tags" (visit the HPOTD FAQ to find out how to use them if you don't already know). Similarly, if you're going to discuss plot points from the comic book, please use "spoiler tags" - not everyone is up-to-date on them, and some people don't read them at all. Enjoy! Directed by: David Boyd Written by: Heather Bellson

[MinionZombie]

I enjoyed this one more than the previous episode - had a bit more variety to it. However, it still is showing the signs of the troubles with: 1) Covid production, and 2) Unintended extra episodes having to be conjured up late in the day. There's no real forward momentum to the overall story, but, there were nonetheless parts that I quite enjoyed. I particularly like Daryl scavenging all sorts of useful stuff from those walkers who were evidently survivalists/military - we don't tend to see quite that level of scavenging on the show. We see searching for food and ammo, but here Daryl was really going through their pockets and digging out treasures. It was interesting to see some of the Alexandria clean-up operation, too, and what some of the myriad challenges you'd have to face as a ravaged community in the ZA, but again, the limits of the production were evident overall. Next weeks' episode is "Here's Negan" ... really looking forward to that one, so hopefully these six tacked-on additional episodes will go out with a strong one ahead of Season 11 kicking off, apparently, in the summer.

[JDP]

This episode was of a more trivial nature, the one last week was more relevant for the upcoming season as it gave us a glimpse of what's going on with that other group. The upcoming episode seems like it also will be more relevant, as it will finally give us a fuller account of Negan's background story, something that we would be inclined to have expected to be shown earlier (during the seasons with the Saviors) but for some reason never happened then.

[MinionZombie]

I know, it was very strange that they never bothered to do Negan's backstory in 7 or 8 ... although doing it now might hopefully be quite good context for the overall Negan/Alexadria/Maggie situation and help delve into his psyche and such going forward. I see what you mean about this week's vs last week's in terms of relevancy and I agree. Although I did enjoy this week's episode more than last week's, which had some moments, but felt too slow and cooped-up ... too minimalist for my TWD tastes.

[Moon Knight]

They didn’t do Negan’s backstory earlier cause the story needed to be told after Negan began his redemption. Negan needed to be a more sympathetic character for the “Here’s Negan” story to work.

[JDP]

They didn’t do Negan’s backstory earlier cause the story needed to be told after Negan began his redemption. Negan needed to be a more sympathetic character for the “Here’s Negan” story to work. But showing it earlier would also have worked, it would have helped understand the way he was back then, his "fucked-upness", if you will. Instead, we only got some vague suggestions, basically pretty much just that his baseball bat has a connection to his wife.

[MinionZombie]

They didn’t do Negan’s backstory earlier cause the story needed to be told after Negan began his redemption. Negan needed to be a more sympathetic character for the “Here’s Negan” story to work. I think that'll ultimately be the right decision, although had it been done earlier it might have helped that 'if we had started with Negan, then Rick & Co would be the villains' talk they were pimping out at the time (something which was handled very nicely and memorably in Michonne's last episode ... 10x13 IIRC? ... with that wonderful 'alternative history' montage). I'm really looking forward to this second season 10 finale.