The Walking Dead season 11 episode 8 spoilers follow — and trailer spoilers that tease what's coming next are included too.
Eight episodes into season 11, The Walking Dead is shuffling towards the end stretch now, which means even more characters could be killed than ever before. Of course, thanks to news of the Carol/Daryl spinoff, we know that some of our faves are guaranteed to make it out alive, but the stakes are still high for everyone else.
Even Maggie, one of the few survivors left from season two, gave us a scare back in this season's premiere, only to appear miraculously unharmed just a short time later. Well, by the end of this mid-season finale (of sorts), Maggie's in the firing line again, and this time round, she's not the only character whose fate is left hanging in a deadly cliffhanger.
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But how did we get here? While the folks at Alexandria reminisced over Michonne and battened down the hatches, Maggie, Negan, Elijah, and Gabriel successfully manage to herd an army of walkers towards Pope and The Reapers (plot hole be damned!). Negan and Elijah are hurt along the way but Maggie still breaks through, because she's Maggie and she kicks ass.
Meanwhile, Daryl is facing a different kind of struggle within the Reapers' compound. Not only does he have to hide his true intentions as a spy, he also has to contend with Leah and their weirdly complicated trust issues. When she finally opens up to him about their time in the cabin, Daryl takes a gamble and spills the beans on who he really is, hoping that Leah will then show mercy on Maggie's gang.
But no, Leah's pissed that her old cabin buddy has taken her for a ride, so she radios the other Reapers and tells them that Daryl was actually the one who killed Pope. It's a savage betrayal, one that neither will recover from anytime soon. And that's true of the show as a whole too. Because just when it looked like the Reapers were recycling older stories from previous seasons, the repetitive nature of their arc has been completely flipped round now by Leah's deep personal connection to Daryl.
Clearly, there are still feelings there, because Leah and Daryl don't try and attack or stop each other following that big revelation. Instead, they both run away from each other back to their respective groups. But hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and that's especially true when that woman leads a pack of rabid, highly-trained mercenaries, so Leah doesn't show Maggie's team the mercy that Daryl hopes for. In fact, she does quite the opposite.
"You would do anything to protect your family. So would I." And with that, Leah unleashes a barrage of explosive arrows down on all our faves just as the screen fades to black. Yep, The Walking Dead just screwed us over with yet another deeply distressing cliffhanger. So will Maggie, Negan, Gabriel, and Elijah survive this attack to return in 2022?
Thankfully, most of them appear in a new trailer that teases what's coming next. Maggie, in particular, has been extremely lucky up to this point anyway, wearing some impenetrable plot armour throughout the show, so it should come as no surprise that she makes it out of this alive.
Negan is another fan-favourite, and talk of a potential spinoff certainly suggests that he was always going to survive this encounter, which the trailer now confirms. Saying that though, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has pointed out that Negan could still die though in the final season, and if he does, then he's not particularly keen to go down the prequel route.
"We've shown these different sides of Negan over the past few years," Morgan told TVLine. "Now I'd like to see, after this ends, what happens to him next. I find that possibility to be a lot more interesting than going back in time."
So who does that leave? Well, Gabriel also pops up in the new trailer, which makes sense because it feels like there's more left to his arc. And that's a shame because a surprise death that takes big players like Maggie, Negan or Gabriel could have certainly shaken things up.
That leaves Elijah, the only one to our mind who remains conspicuously absent in the latest preview. And honestly, that shouldn't come as a big surprise. Not only is the Masked Man less established than the other three, there's also a sense of closure to his story now that we know his sister died and became a zombie.
Or maybe, just maybe, everyone makes it out alive, aside of course from the random unnamed people who just show up to be eaten by zombies every week. But whatever happens, expect to see a very different kind of fireworks explode between Daryl and his former love, especially now that Leah has stepped up to become (what we assume is) this season's new Big Bad — alongside the Commonwealth's Pamela Milton, of course.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays on AMC in the US. UK viewers can now watch all episodes via STAR on Disney+, where new episodes of season 11 will premiere each Monday.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
