The Walking Dead: "Swear" Review – IGN

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Hey, it's Tara and Heath! The characters who took off near the tail end of last season on a two-person scavenger run so that star Alanna Masterson could have a baby and Straight Outta Compton's Corey Hawkins could free himself up to star on the new 24 series (which got picked up by FOX last April). "Swear" was all about what happened to them and their misadventures on the road aaaaannd...it was still too long.

Yes, it was good to finally discover what Tara and Heath have been up to while everyone else was suffering at the hands of Negan and his Saviors, and Tara's a character who definitely could benefit by having her own story, but the overall placement of this one, from a seasonal standpoint, felt wonky.

Sure, one could ask: "When would there be a good time to stop everything a check in with Tara?" It would feel odd regardless, right? It's just that this was an hour-plus of Tara. It was an overlong B (maybe C) story that ended with her coming home and finally learning about what happened to Denise - which, in the grand scheme of show deaths, now feels buried under the more recent, notable exits.

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The best thing "Swear" did though, despite its slight self-indulgence, was tie everything back to the Saviors. Not just because the all-female community Tara discovered had lost all their men (and boys over 10) to Negan's goons, but also because Tara, not yet knowing what she'd lost back home, was all about killing all those Saviors back at the outpost. She was almost proud of what she and her friends had done in the name of survival. Here, she represented the lingering karma of that horrific "first strike" massacre while Heath remained the shaken voice of opposition.

Tara still needs a bit of work from a character standpoint, but at least her conviction that all the murders her crew committed were justified more or less fits with her as someone who was part of the Governor's assault on Rick's prison. Tara may be a goofball at times, but she's pretty ruthless in the grand scheme of things. Heath however, being a sheltered Alexandrian, naturally felt a ton of regret.

But was Heath such a passive presence that he'd become an outright coward when it counted? That was sort of a mini-mystery built into the episode since, at first, it looked like he abandoned Tara on that bridge. Of course, it only seemed that way because they didn't show his heroic attempt to save her (that still ended with her toppling into the water) until the end. Nothing really came of that revelation except to note that Heath was a good guy who, now, may or may not ever return. It was a way of writing him off the show without closing the door on the character completely.

The first half of this season has devoted a lot of time to exploring new communities such as the Saviors' Sanctuary and Ezekiel's Kingdom. This week's cluster of survivorsalmostfelt too heightened: an isolated island of cutthroat women ready to kill any stranger they ran into. For a while, it seemed like Tara had washed up on the shores of a dystopian sci-fi cliche of sorts, and all that was missing was a speech about how men had ruined the world and it was up to women to now set things right. Fortunately, things never remained that basic and business picked up toward the end when the leader lied to Tara and tried to have her executed out in the woods.

Tara's choice to not reveal what she'd seen at the end was a curious one. After returning to Alexandria, Rosita and Eugene filled her in on all the carnage, including Denise's demise. Tara had the chance to give up all the guns and supplies that she'd just seen, but opted to keep quiet. Perhaps, with her lover's death, the consequences of her team's actions finally set in and her regrets now outweighed her need for violence.

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Maybe she even cared about young Cindy, the granddaughter of the island's leader, Netanya, who sort of represented an on-the-nose pacifist counterpoint to Tara, and wanted to protect her. That's feasible, though everyone else on that island was dead-set on killing Tara, even after they'd invited her to dinner and heard her whole story. I don't know, Cindy was pretty much the place's one redeemable quality. Everyone else, despite all the tragedy suffered, was kind of off-putting.

Given all the separate "Kill Negan" revenge schemes going on at the moment, it is good to know that guns might be available at some point, perhaps, along with a small army of people who also have a huge bone to pick with the Saviors. I mean, I'm not sure if we'll ever circle back to these women -- it could all just remain Tara's strange secret -- though it'd be odd not to. I will say that, if anything, maybe this whole experience taught Tara not to be so forthcoming about being, basically, a mercenary willing to kill members of other communities. Sure, she tried to lie about herself at first, but then, when the jig was up, she easily over-shared the part about her life involving murder.

The Verdict

"Swear" was a bit reminiscent of Season 6's "Always Accountable" in the sense that it showed us a side story about a straggling core cast member that involved a few new faces who, hopefully, will pay dividends later. The initial meeting is obligatory -- necessary to set things up for later on down the road. Like when Daryl met Dwight and Sherry last year. It wasn't the sort of story that stood well on its own, but just now, almost a year later, the characters are starting to find their place and hit their mark. Hopefully, that'll be the case with "Swear" and all the new faces Tara encountered.

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The Walking Dead: "Swear" Review - IGN