The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 13 Review: Warlords
This The Walking Dead review contains spoilers.
The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 13
When it comes to guest stars, someone over at The Walking Dead is a big fan of The Terminator franchise of movies. In Season 10’s bonus episode, “One More,” the venerable T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick, shows up. Patrick’s turn as the intimidating, dangerous, psychologically-damaged man known as Mays (and his brother Mays) was one of the highlights of the bonus episodes. It’s unsurprising that Patrick, who has become a sci-fi icon, would show up and make a big impression in 25 minutes of screen time. If an idea works once, might as well keep trying it, right? The Walking Dead goes back to the Terminator universe for their next featured guest-star, with Michael Biehn playing the titular warlord in “Warlords.”
Perhaps it’s just my being a mark for Biehn, but it’s an inspired bit of casting because of the way it plays on Biehn’s legacy as an action movie hero. Even when his character Ian pulls out a gun and starts making angry demands and threatening the delegation from The Commonwealth, it’s hard not to believe that somewhere in him is a good guy. He might bark loudly, but Ian is clearly a good person at his core because he has a successful community that hasn’t created trouble for anyone who didn’t come looking for it. His threatening wall of skulls isn’t for people who’ve crossed him, like The Governor’s trophy case. Ian describes the skulls as belonging to murderers, rapists, and other assorted wolves in sheep’s clothing. Given the amount of skulls on his wall, it’s not surprising that he’s careful about the offers being made by The Commonwealth, because while there are some legitimate sheep making real offers, there’s a wolf in The Commonwealth’s midst.
The Commonwealth has been established as mostly a community of nice people who are in over their head when outside of their bubble. Sure, you have wolves, like Lance (Josh Hamilton), and sheep dogs like Mercer (Michael James Shaw), but they are the exception. For the most part, Toby Carlson (Jason Butler Harner), who works with Aaron (Ross Marquand) in community outreach, seems like an affable guy who has a little too much power, a little too much enthusiasm, and a little too few brains when it comes to dealing with dangerous people. After all, The Commonwealth hasn’t been doing a lot of outreach to the other communities, until Alexandria came along, so it’d be natural that Carlson might not be experienced at post-apocalyptic deal-making. Bringing Aaron and Gabriel (Seth Deaton) along seems like a good idea, as does letting them do the talking.
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