It might be hard to believe, but there are only two episodes left before The Walking Dead begins its mid-season break. If this season operates like most before it, that means the bodies might start piling up very soon—but this Sunday’s episode, like those before it, has been a slow burn. True, we finally saw a few faces we’d almost forgotten—and thus were forced to once again think about one of the most disappointing aspects of Season 6. More discussion ahead of how Season 7 handled the one remaining thread from its predecessor, but first, your usual spoiler warning.
Has the hopelessness of this season left you craving a brief vacation—perhaps somewhere tropical? Good news! This was your week—well, sort of. The series finally caught up with Tara, who—we learn through flashbacks—fell off a bridge as she and Heath tried to fight off an overwhelming horde of sandy zombies. After a long journey (more on that later), Tara makes it back to Alexandria, wearing kitschy sunglasses and grinning from ear to ear—until she sees Eugene’s sad, crying face.
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Before she left to go on a supply run with Heath last season—a tidy way to temporarily write pregnant actress Alanna Masterson off the show—Tara told Denise she loved her. Soon after, Denise took an arrow right through the eye. But this was not your run-of-the-mill Walking Dead demise. It sparked outrage among some fans, because it played right into a troublesome TV trope: “Bury Your Gays”—or, more specifically, “Dead Lesbian Syndrome.” And it came just as discussion of the trend had come to a head. (The full explanation is here, but the gist is pretty simple: on TV, gay people don’t get to live happily ever after, if they live at all.) In the comics, the death that befell Denise was actually meant for Abraham—who, we now know, had to stay alive in the show so that he could be sacrificed in the Season 6 finale/Season 7 premiere.
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In light of the criticism during Season 6, The Walking Dead had a chance to make amends in Season 7 by at least treating Denise’s death—and Tara’s devastation—with equal weight. Instead, her grief gets less than five minutes at the end of the episode.
Right after we see Eugene’s sad face, we cut to a profile view of him and Tara staring at one another. Tara takes a deep, devastated-looking breath and looks to the ground like a sad character in a wordless Pixar short. Then, as quickly as the moment happens, we cut away once more—this time to Tara sitting on the floor of Denise’s old doctor’s office, playing with a doctor bobblehead doll that she’d picked up (probably for Denise) earlier. Rosita is standing in the background.
“I’m sorry, Tara,” Rosita says.
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“I’m sorry, too,” are Tara’s first words after we see her find out. She sounds glum, exhausted, and defeated. But she doesn’t sound raw. Compare that with the gut-wrenching sobs and close-ups of devastated faces we got from Maggie and Sasha when Glenn and Abraham died. Of course, this is different—Tara didn’t have to witness Denise’s death. Still, it hardly feels like Tara’s emotions get their due here. Between finding out what happened and the episode’s close, she only utters thirteen words-“I’m sorry, too,” and another reply to Rosita, who asked whether she saw any guns or ammo they could use to right the wrongs Negan and his men have inflicted.
“We can’t,” Tara says. “I didn’t see anything like that out there.”
It’s a deceptively meaningful moment—because Tara definitely did see a full armory on her trip. She’s simply keeping another group’s secret, after making a promise. It’s a moment that tells us the kind of person Tara is—and will remain, no matter what horrible things befall her and her loved ones. But treating Tara like a martyr is hardly a solution to last season’s problem. If anything, it’s doubling down on that same issue. Since Tara just came back, we’ll give The Walking Dead the benefit of the doubt and assume that this story has a more satisfying conclusion still simmering—but with the first half of the season almost up, the clock is ticking.
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