- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for season 10, episode 21 of "
The Walking Dead ," "Diverged." - Fans will either love or hate this bottle episode of "TWD" where next to nothing happens plot wise.
- Fans who have gone through a fight with a best friend may find it immensely relatable.
Sunday's episode of "The Walking Dead" will go down as one of the series' most divisive episodes.
Depending on who you ask, "Diverged," is either one of the series worst episodes or a great character study of Carol (Melissa McBride) and Daryl (Norman Reedus).
This is 'TWD's' 'Fly' episode
Do you remember "Breaking Bad's" "Fly" episode that fans either loved or hated? It involved Walter White's obsession with chasing a fly for 46 minutes of television and was produced as a result of the show's budgetary constraints at that point.
Sunday's "TWD" is very reminiscent of that 2010 episode as Carol chases around a rat for most of the episode.
On the surface, "Diverged" is a bit of a slog and a completely unnecessary bottle episode.
A follow-up to an earlier episode this season, "Find Me," Carol and Daryl have hit a low point in their friendship after a heated argument. As a result, both are struggling to do even the simplest of tasks without their best friend on their mind. Carol can't make soup because of an agitating rodent and Daryl struggles fixing his motorcycle out in the forest.
It can be painful to watch at points unless you are extremely invested in these two characters.
Daryl's dog gets the most screen time as he wrecks havoc in his master's home trying to sniff out the rat. If you're a fan of the pupper, maybe that isn't so bad since fans spent most of season 10 searching high and low for the canine in scenes.
Perhaps the most frustrating parts of Sunday's episode are that the stakes aren't high even in moments of tension. Daryl struggles to fight off a walker at one point, but we know he's never in any real danger if he's getting his own spinoff series in 2023.
A worried Carol confides to Dog that maybe her longstanding friendship with Daryl is really over. Again, we know these two are going to make up eventually. They're Carol and Daryl for crying out loud. Who are we fooling? What are the stakes?
The pains of filming during the pandemic are felt on this episode
A concern heading into these bonus six episodes was that some of them may feel like nothing more than filler, making the episodes, ultimately feel skippable during a rewatch of the entire series. "Diverged" is definitely an episode that won't be missed if you forget to tune in.
Filmed over six weeks starting last October, we knew these episodes would be more contained, intimate stories with a small roster of "TWD's" very large ensemble cast.
While "TWD" has utilized the more constrained format to do deep and interesting character studies of Aaron, Father Gabriel, and Princess, fans already had an episode devoted to Carol and Daryl a few weeks back.
In a behind-the-scenes feature on AMC+ for the episode, showrunner Angela Kang said the idea of Carol chasing the rat came up in the writers' room before and was "attached to different people in different stories at various times." In some ways, Sunday's episode uses recycled material that never came to fruition in the past.
When Insider requested a weekly interview for the episode, we were told talent likely wasn't doing press this week. Instead, the network gave Insider and other outlets a second episode of "The Walking Dead," the highly-anticipated Negan-centric final episode of the bonus six.
Based on the graphic novel, "Here's Negan," which tells the character's backstory, it's one of the series' best episodes in years. (But more on that next week.)
Making the case for 'Diverged'
Not everyone is going to walk away upset from this episode.
"Diverged" takes a long look at what happens when you have a fight with a best friend and conflict is left unresolved. For Carol and Daryl, it becomes an all-consuming stressor.
No matter how hard they try and run from and ignore it by finding other ways to preoccupy their time, their recent fight and subsequent fallout is so present on both their minds that neither can concentrate on even the most mundane of tasks.
As Kang notes in the behind-the-scenes feature for Sunday's episode, Carol puts much of her focus on anything else - saying she'll mend a piece of clothing, making soup, and then, ultimately, the rat - in order to take her mind off of Daryl.
McBride's performance in this episode is great, given that she has very little to work with. You feel her internal struggle as she wants to be able to fix something when she, herself, feels so very broken. By the end of the episode, you want to give this woman a hug. (Thank goodness Cooper Andrew's Jerry does so.)
Of course, none of Carol's solves work because none of them fix the fact that she has unresolved issues with Daryl. And sure, maybe it's silly for Carol to ponder whether or not a friendship of over a decade is really rattled after one argument because, again, we know these two are getting their own spinoff.
But the entire notion of worrying over whether or not a friendship has run its course is extremely relatable for anyone who has gone through a quarrel with a good friend. There's nothing like having something unsettled with a loved one to throw everything off.
However you may feel about Sunday's episode, something to remember is that "Diverged" is a byproduct of the pandemic and its filming constraints.
But if this is a taste of what's to come on the untitled Carol and Daryl show, AMC has its work cut out for them.
You can follow along with our ongoing "The Walking Dead" coverage here.