WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 10, “New Haunts,” now streaming on AMC+.
The Walking Dead‘s zombie-apocalypse world is slowly building back to its civilized times before the outbreak, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Season 11, Episode 10 explores the world of the Commonwealth, which manages to use the worst parts of the old world to restore order and laws.
Like in its comics counterpart, the Commonwealth is a city of united towns that supposedly holds more than 50,000 people, which obviously means it’s figured out the game of survival in a world taken over by the dead. Led by Governor Pamela Milton, with her deputy governor Lance Hornsby as her voice to its people, the Commonwealth has a pretty strict system that resembles the days of the past, including the insufferable class inequality that has snuck into a world of no rules.
“New Haunts” jumps 30 days after many members of Alexandria have joined the Commonwealth, ditching their interviews and the processing that Ezekiel and his group experienced. The Walking Dead makes the right decision to skip all of the Commonwealth exposition, explaining the importance of jobs in the city and the government that controls it, and instead, the show allows the viewers to see first-hand how mundane but absurd the society is. The people of Alexandria already have secured jobs that fit their past life or current experiences: Rosita and Daryl are training to join the army, Carol is a baker, Ezekiel maintains a petting zoo, Connie works as a reporter and Magna is a waiter.
The Commonwealth obviously has bigger issues than the wine supply, and it’s only the smallest tease of what the episode shows Alexandria’s residents are dealing with. Rosita comments how strange it is to worry about money, and Daryl is also struggling to pay rent for an apartment with paper-thin walls that he and the Grimes kids are staying in. The medical community has its residents waiting in a long line for surgery, which jeopardizes Ezekiel’s health as his cancer is worsening.
These issues are all present in the real world, but the Commonwealth has a chance to start over and is blowing it by continuing these societal problems into the new world. Looking back at the communities of Alexandria, Hilltop and the Kingdom, they didn’t rely on a unbalanced currency that dictates its survivors’ living conditions, and they didn’t have a class system that recognizes one person over another based on their jobs or abilities. It’s telling how much people miss the old world, regardless of its systemic challenges, because out of all of the communities, the Commonwealth is the only one left standing.
To see how the Commonwealth keeps its society together, watch The Walking Dead Season 11, Episode 10 on AMC+. New episodes air every Sunday at 9 pm ET on AMC, and are available a week early to stream on AMC+.