2 Years Later, This Walking Dead Spinoff Still Can't Solve Its Biggest Problem

The Walking Dead: Dead City is unique among the Walking Dead franchise. It may recycle old ideas and concepts from the main series, but no other TWD show has seen its survivors fight over methane produced by walker remains as culturally-rich music ripples in the background. Somehow, Dead City is more European than TWD: Daryl Dixon. But just because it performs a few good acts doesn't mean Dead City is absolved of its sins.

Dead City is the pinnacle of greed. Groups in the story colonize each other for resources while characters suck the sanity and life out of themselves and others for revenge. But the true greed lies with the idea of Dead City itself -- that, for some reason, Maggie and Negan's perfectly great ending in The Walking Dead needed to be squashed to wring a few more seasons out of these characters for fan service. While people could easily look past this injustice in the first season because Dead City is truly a cool concept, Season 2 makes it very hard to ignore. In its sophomore season, Dead City is still compellingly unhinged, but doesn't have enough of a purpose to justify its existence.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Gets Blunt About Parenting With Trauma

Maggie and Hershel Are Now the Beating Heart of Dead City

A big improvement from Dead City's first season is dialing up the relationship between Maggie and her teenage son Hershel. Some time after the Season 1 finale, Maggie has her hands full. Not only is she raising an emotionally detached Hershel and the orphaned Ginny, she also has New Babylon breathing down her neck after being forced to join their network of settlements. By focusing more on Maggie's struggle to balance parenting with her own needs, Maggie and Hershel have become the moral center of Dead City.

The result of this shift is that people will more likely root for Maggie and Hershel to overcome their differences than Maggie and Negan. This is a natural outcome of a season in which the protagonists don't cross paths too often in the first six episodes screened to journalists, but that's not to say their stories don't affect each other. For better or worse, Maggie and Negan are intertwined by a cruel fate. But there's a more personal stake in Maggie and Hershel struggling to understand each other and their trauma. Hershel's turn down a darker path poses a threat to Maggie's psyche, which is already hanging on by a thread thanks to Negan and New Babylon. The astute analysis of how a parent's repressed burdens seep into their relationship with their child keeps Dead City on a momentous platform.

Dead City's ambitious drive to tackle Maggie and Hershel's deliciously complex dynamic winds up fan expectations, only to hit a wall at some point. Hershel is angry at his mother because he's a teenage boy who antagonizes for the sake of antagonizing. But whether it's his true feelings or the Dama spitting venom in his ear, Dead City wants viewers to believe Hershel's concerns are valid. The issue is that Dead City doesn't know how to articulate this validity. A climactic argument between Maggie and Hershel later in the season is a prime example of this, when they loudly scream at each other but dance around the true issue. The interesting themes present in their shared arc get lost in frustrating and confusing dialogue that ultimately says nothing, and make Hershel a difficult character to follow. On the bright side, Logan Kim is exceptionally good at matching Lauren Cohan's intensity.

Dead City has its characters say time and again that Maggie is a bad mother for certain reasons, but her actions say otherwise. It feels like a form of gaslighting is being imposed on both Maggie and the viewers to make her believe she's a villain for simply existing. Often, this comes across as a form of misogynstic character assassination. This is Dead City being at war with itself: it creates a problem for the sake of churning out another season, but the problem doesn't fit Maggie's arc.

Dead City Season 2 Finally Reedems Negan in a Way That Makes Sense

The Season Gives Negan Comprehensible Redemption At Last

Back in Manhattan, Negan is facing big trouble in the Big Apple. He simultaneously acts like the Croat and the Dama's prisoner and their intimidating mediator. While the execution of Maggie's progression is jerky, Negan's is steadily more regular. Dead City clearly wants to make him a good guy who, at times, does bad things. This characterization is fitting for the apocalypse. His attempted redemption has had mixed reactions over the years. Some rightfully claim it's not deserved because he's never fully acknowledged the more heinous acts of his past, and others simply just like Negan because of Jeffrey Dean Morgan's charm, which is also valid.

Negan isn't a full-blown hero by any means this season, if there are truly any left in The Walking Dead's world. He's still got the bat-swinging, f-bomb-dropping tricks up his sleeve that bring to life Robert Kirkman's vision of the comic book character. He also still makes infuriating decisions that remind viewers how awful he is as a human being. But Morgan makes it much more convincing to relate to Negan as a man who doesn't care about the war for methane and control over the city. There's a true sense that he cares about the little guys in the world. One of Dead City's biggest achievements this season is finally putting Negan in a sympathetic light.

The Political Pitfalls of Rebuilding the World Take Over Dead City

Dead City Brings Dark Elements of Real Life Into the Apocalypse

Dead City is plenty political this season, taking the core of the Commonwealth storyline from The Walking Dead Season 11 and explicitly stamping the word "colonization" on it. Frankly, Dead City is better for it. It's not afraid of committing to the consequences of stealing land and forcefully subjugating people to live under one name and one law. There's also the icky underlying motivation of drafting soldiers to steal methane. The critical messaging draws parallels to real-world history -- Europeans colonizing most of the world and the debated rationale for Americans invading other countries. The deeper look into the ethical issues surrounding the restoration of society is Season 2's most alluring grab.

Old and new characters carry the delicate subject. Željko Ivanek and Lisa Emery return as the Croat and the Dama in an interesting dynamic similar to Lance Hornsby and Pamela Milton from the main series. Gaius Charles, one of Dead City's strongest performers, also returns as Perlie Armstrong, who slowly realizes he may be on the wrong side of history as the unprincipled Lucia Narvaez (played by Dascha Polanco) hits the ground running. The most exciting addition to the cast is Kim Coates as Bruegel. Coates brings a flirty flamboyance to Bruegel, topped with a New York accent that is a luxury to watch and listen to. Hopefully, he sticks around for the long haul.

The Walking Dead: Dead City Is Entertaining Television, But Lacks a Reason to Exist

Season 2 Is More Sensational, Despite Its Shortcomings

Dead City's more political swings are, sadly, restricted by Maggie and Negan's presence. Similar to TWD: Daryl Dixon's snags, Dead City has ambitious ideas that are reduced to accommodate the protagonists who don't naturally fit this story. Maggie and Negan's personal quarrels clunk up the narrative and repeat themselves in a tedious cycle that is never-ending. A hypothetical world where Dead City is led by Perlie, the Croat and the Dama would've brightly had a more poignant vision that could soar freely.

The TWD spinoff could not have returned at a worse time. There's fierce competition with the second seasons of The Last of Us and Andor right now, the former of which is arguably Dead City's biggest rival. But Dead City does live up to the fact that it's pure fun. Cohan pulls off a challenging directorial debut, including one of the pulpiest fights in the series. So many bold choices either lean into the true horror of the original Walking Dead series, or the silliness of the spinoffs. There are head-scratching things viewers should look past if they want a good time, such as most characters being dressed like the zombie apocalypse hit in the 1920s and not 2010. However, Dead City is endlessly supplied with moments that will drop jaws on the floor.

Season 2 of Dead City, though, still doesn't answer the bigger question: why does this show exist? These are two of the greatest characters in the history of the apocalyptic genre: a woman burdened by so much loss that has toughened her up for the worst, and a sadistic anti-hero who changed a prestigious TV show forever. But they're also stuck in the same position they were in nearly three years ago when The Walking Dead ended. Since Dead City's most aspiring ideas only touch the surface, Season 2 may just want to satisfy immediate cravings. But as quirky and gratifying as the short-term fixes are, Dead City ends up feeling as empty as the city it's set in when it could be climbing to new heights.