The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 18: “Find Me” Recap and Review
DESPITE A FRANTIC PACE, THIS DARYL-CENTRIC HOUR EXEMPLIFIES, VIA FLASHBACKS, WHAT THE SHOW DOES BEST.
“Find Me” is something of a return to form for “The Walking Dead”. As discussed in our review last week, “Home Sweet Home” was a decent enough return episode, but between the production changes necessitated by COVID, and the sudden introduction of a brand new threat to the show immediately after the previous one was extinguished, it felt a little bit sloppy. This week, we spend the lion’s share of the hour once again with Daryl (Norman Reedus), but this time he begins it paired off with Carol (Melissa McBride) as they go scavenging for materials with which to repair the walls of Alexandria, partly destroyed a few episodes earlier by the Whisperers.
Shortly after the cold open, however, the pair - accompanied by Daryl’s trusty dog, aptly named Dog - happen upon a rundown, long-abandoned cabin where, underneath the floorboards, Carol finds a letter written years earlier by Daryl. This leads us back to the middle of the six-year time jump that happened part way through season nine, where we go on to experience roughly three years of that period through Daryl’s eyes. This is exciting and almost entirely uncharted territory for the show, as there was an incredible job done of obfuscating the events of the gap in the timeline previously - the only other time we had ventured into that part of the show’s timeline at all was for a handful of flashbacks in the episode “Scars”.
These flashbacks begin roughly two years into the time jump or, more importantly, two years after the presumed death of Rick Grimes. Daryl has isolated himself in the woods, searching desperately for Rick’s body, but failing to come up with anything. The dramatic irony, of course, is that we know Rick is still alive, but was taken far away from the Virginia setting of the show, and that Daryl will never find him by the time we catch up to the present. However, the emotional undercurrent of a man trying to gain closure over the loss of his surrogate brother lands because of Reedus’ work. A scene where Daryl loses it over the loss of a map he was using to chart his search could have come across like something goofy and over-the-top in a less capable actor’s hands, but it instead plays with complete sincerity and provides layers of information about Daryl’s headspace.
It’s during his isolation that Daryl first encounters Dog, at this point still a puppy, and it is in following the eager pup that Daryl finds the cabin, which at this point is still in perfect shape. Daryl kills a walker inside before being confronted by Leah (Lynn Collins), who holds him at gunpoint but ultimately dismisses him. We then jump to several months later when Daryl encounters Dog again, and returns him to Leah. There’s a sort of back-and-forth that happens between the two over the next year where they share a brief encounter together, once again part ways, time passes, and the cycle repeats. Finally, however, they spend a day together, where Leah opens up about her past, including the loss of her son, Daryl talks about losing Rick, including referring to Rick for the very first time as “[his] brother”, and there’s a strong implication that the two begin some sort of romance.
This is particularly interesting for Daryl as the character has never been shown in any kind of sexual or romantic entanglement before, not even with Carol or Connie (Lauren Ridloff), a character who Daryl has spent much of the past two seasons with. However, just as we arrive at this moment, the episode jumps forward another ten months, where Daryl and Leah have an acrimonious split due to Daryl’s obsession with finding Rick; Leah insists that he choose a place to be, and Daryl at first chooses to leave. After a chance run-in and conversation with Carol, however, Daryl realizes that he wants to be with Leah, and returns to the cabin, only to find Leah gone and Dog left on his own. Daryl leaves his letter for Leah, which goes undiscovered and unread for two years until Carol finds it.
“Find Me”, along with both of the previous two episodes of “The Walking Dead”, runs for the regular 42-to-45-minute length that most of the show’s episodes do. “A Certain Doom” managed to close the book on a major villain’s entire storyline without running long; “Home Sweet Home” introduced a new threat and reconnected Daryl and Maggie without running long; and now “Find Me” places us in the past, and runs through three years of Daryl’s life without any kind of extension to the regular runtime. A television series certainly has no obligation to break format, and even more to the point, an episode of television should never run longer just for the sake of being longer. With that being said, there’s a certain feeling that this three-episode run is missing the odd scene to let audiences breathe, and to let the character relationships that make the show so watchable develop further. “Here’s Not Here”, from the sixth season - the series’ finest hour and something unlikely to be topped - was unafraid of extending its runtime to 64 minutes, and as a result, the bond between Morgan (Lennie James) and Eastman (John Carroll Lynch) became that much stronger, and the exploration of how Morgan turned into the person we would later encounter was enriched by the extra time we got to spend with him.
It’s not that all of these episodes needed to be longer, so much as it feels like just one of them should’ve been, and it arguably should’ve been “Find Me”. The particular point where the episode feels too rushed is when it skips over the entire romance between Daryl and Leah just as it seems to begin, cutting from her leading him to the bedroom to 10 months later where they treat one another coldly. Leah is a really interesting character and Collins plays her beautifully in each scene, and while it’s always welcome for a show to hold back answers and reveal things about characters piecemeal rather than all at once, this feels like something whose inclusion could have deepened the emotional impact of the episode. The point is driven further home by the fact that “Find Me” is generally great, and deserves to be mentioned alongside some of the show’s best recent episodes.
As for the storyline in the present, it comes up short when compared to the rest of the episode, though it also takes up so little of the runtime that it’s difficult to dock many points from the overall hour. Daryl and Carol have a really great conversation at the start where Carol conveys her fears of how their luck has “run out”, and how, after so much heartbreak and loss, she’s steeling herself to lose Alexandria as well. At the end, however, Daryl and Carol get into an argument about Connie, who they believe to have died several episodes back due to Carol’s actions. There are two big problems with this. The first is the fact that Daryl and Carol get into a fight about it at all, as they had already spent much of the second half of season ten fighting, and had finally reconciled at the end of “A Certain Doom”. It feels like the characters have suddenly taken ten steps back in their relationship, beginning a repeat of a cycle we’ve already sat through. The second is that, again leaning into dramatic irony, we know Connie is alive. Despite this having been revealed in “A Certain Doom”, we’ve now had two consecutive episodes - after a subplot involving her sister Kelly’s attempts to find her in “Home Sweet Home” - where characters mourn and/or search for Connie despite the audience knowing she survived and is safe. If there was supposed to be an emotional impact, especially in this second episode, the show should’ve held off on the reveal.
Nonetheless, this is another really good episode under Angela Kang’s leadership of “The Walking Dead”. Leah is an exciting new character for the show, and this likely isn’t the last we will see of her. However she is reintroduced, and however her story plays out, this is a worthy introduction for her. Anything that can be positively compared to “Here’s Not Here” is always going to be a welcome addition to this series, and “Find Me” manages to live up to that for the most part.