Spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 10, Episode 17 “Home Sweet Home” past this point.
If you thought the bonus episodes of Walking Dead Season 10 that began premiering this week would be light affairs, without the requisite new villains… Well, you thought wrong, because this week’s episode may have introduced the show’s next big threat after The Whisperers: The Reapers.
First, though, a little real world (and episode) recap, in case you’re confused. Technically, The Walking Dead Season 10 ended a few months back with a special episode that finished The Whisperer threat, once and for all. Initially planned as the Season 10 finale, the episode wasn’t completed before COVID hit, and only months later was the TWD team able to finalize the episode. The series also announced that it will be wrapping up with Season 11, which will stretch over 24 episodes, and two years, before spinning off into two additional shows (at least).
However, as a sort of bridge to the final season, The Walking Dead is also rolling out six bonus episodes of Season 10, which take place after the ostensible Season 10 finale. Yes, this is confusing, but bear with us… Each episode was filmed during COVID, and given descriptions seemed to drill down on one or two characters, which makes sense given production restrictions. For example, this week’s “Home Sweet Home,” on the surface, mostly looked like it focused on the returning Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan), Negan (Jeffrey Dean-Morgan) and Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus).
That’s sort of true, but also… Not true at all? Because “Home Sweet Home” is very much your run of the mill episode of The Walking Dead. It’s maybe not as big as the end of The Whisperer War, but in it Maggie is tagging along with members of her new group, mostly avoids talking to Negan (the man who killed her husband, as if you could forget), and ends up getting hunted in the woods with Daryl and company. Turns out the guy hunting them is probably part of a new group called The Reapers, and they nearly wiped out Maggie’s previous group.
By episode’s end, the near-silent Reaper has blown himself up rather than provide any answers, and Maggie and her remaining team have agreed to hole up in Alexandria. That’s partially because Hilltop was destroyed by the Whisperers (and Alexandria isn’t in much better shape). It’s also partially because she’s returning home again, the place she most identifies with her time with her deceased husband Glenn (Steven Yeun), and that’s where she wants to raise their son.
That’s all well and good, but who are the Reapers, what do they want, and why did they follow Maggie from her previous home? We get only one clue, the man hunting them telling Maggie, “Pope marked you,” before blowing himself up. Normally with these sorts of things we can turn to the comics source material by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. In this case, unless these names (Pope and Reapers) are stand-ins for something else, we don’t actually have any reference here.
There is one other clue, but it’s a stretch, at best. The Reaper introduced here, who is credited as “The Attacker” in the episode, is played by actor Mike Whinnet. Whinnet previously was another unnamed part on The Walking Dead: one of Negan’s old group, The Saviors. Though it’s entirely possible Whinnet might have been cast again on the show because he played a no-name background character, given his Savior never died on screen, it’s also possible he actually survived and joined The Reapers. Not that Maggie’s new BFF Negan will be able to recognize him from all the chunks he leaves by episode’s end, but if you want to head-canon this, that is a-okay.
Is it possible these Reapers are, in some way, connected to the franchise uber-bad The Civic Republic Military (CRM)? Sure. They wear military uniforms, and Whinnet’s character was wearing camo. Why not! But more likely, this is a bridge villain for these bridge episodes, before we’re thrust into the upcoming Commonwealth storyline in Season 11; one which also led into the end of the comic book.
Point being, The Reapers may be the next Bad, but when it comes to episode count, don’t expect them to be Big.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.
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