The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3 premiere wastes no time picking up the pieces after the explosive Season 2 finale. Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are still recovering from their wounds, the Croat’s (Željko Ivanek) empire has crumbled, and the methane war has left New York in ruins. As old enemies become uneasy allies and new survivors emerge, the premiere answers one major question about the Croat’s fate while setting the stage for a dangerous new chapter. Here’s what happened in the Season 3 premiere, “Trillium.” Warning: Spoilers ahead for Season 3 Episode 1 of The Walking Dead: Dead City.
How does the episode kick off?
Maggie and Negan begin the episode as two of Manhattan’s most wanted fugitives, with a person named “Sarge” ordering wanted posters featuring their mugs to be plastered across the city. While tensions between the pair continue to simmer, their bickering is cut short when they’re captured by two survivors, Luis (Raúl Castillo) and Renata (Aimee Garcia), who think Negan is the Croat’s second-in-command. Desperate to recover the methane tanks, the pair take Maggie and Negan prisoner. Before they can get far, they unexpectedly run into Hershel (Logan Kim), but their reunion is interrupted when a bomb explodes nearby, throwing everyone into chaos.
As walkers pour into the streets, chaos erupts. In the confusion, they also stumble across an injured Croat, who is nabbed by Luis and Renata in an effort to lead them to the methane tanks.
Unfortunately, New Babylon has taken the tanks, and the explosions have left the Croat seriously wounded.
Four months earlier…
Prior to this little reunion, it is revealed that the Croat once discovered Luis and Renata’s little community just as they were celebrating the upcoming birth of brother Chucho (Joshua de Jesus) and wife Yvette’s (Krystina Alabado) baby. Claiming everyone had to contribute to the “greater society,” and unhappy that their society is only contributing doctors, the Croat stabs Luis’ uncle to give the doctors something to do.
Croat then kills Chucho because “killing the right person at the right time makes everyone fall in line.” He even echoes one of Negan’s most infamous moments by playing “eenie, meenie, minie, moe.” Renata threatens to blow everyone up by opening up a gas line and threatening to ignite them all. The Croat and his men walk away.
A race to save a little life
Back in the present, the small group takes refuge in a basement while a walker horde gathers outside. Renata and Luis explain that Yvette went into labor early, and the baby’s only chance of survival is an incubator powered by a methane tank.
Hershel has a heart-to-heart with his mother and reveals he realized the Dama (Lisa Emery) manipulated him into wanting Maggie dead, so he bounced.
Meanwhile, Luis and Renata consider killing the Croat, who continues to sing the praises of Negan, his one-time teacher. Negan puts a damper on the party with one of the episode’s bleakest observations: “Haven’t you learned by now what happens to people stupid enough to have hope in this world?”
Maggie focuses on getting power restored to the Bricks and invites Renata and the others to join her.
Brand new friend?
Negan wanders upstairs and discovers an intact bar run by an eccentric survivor named Dillard (Jimmi Simpson), who has somehow maintained a fully functioning watering hole throughout the apocalypse. Holed up inside the juke joint for the last few walker-filled years, Dillard has built a self-sustaining food chain in the ruined apartments upstairs, still has a working PlayStation, and has even cultivated his own loyal clientele: a handful of toothless walkers chained to the tables. In Negan’s eyes, he’s stumbled into paradise.
Meanwhile, the Croat’s injuries continue to worsen downstairs.
Robert Clark/AMC
What happens to the Croat?
Eventually, the group tracks down the methane tank they desperately need at the Croatian embassy, so they head out. The journey proves to be the end of the road for the Croat. As he dies, Negan holds him, and they talk of their relationship and what they meant to each other. The Croat dies on the embassy steps in Negan’s arms.
It is a surprisingly emotional moment; Negan breaks down in tears over the loss of the man who had once idolized him. He was once a friend he turned into a monster, and whether it is tears of guilt, shame, or sadness, Negan is emotional over the loss. As soon as he dies, he stabs him in the head to prevent him from coming back as a walker.
On the bright side, the group scores a tank.
New friends, and old enemies
With the tank finally secured, the group reaches the hospital in time for Luis to help deliver the baby. With the birth of the baby, Luis decides it is time to let go of the past and put down the reanimated Chucho, whom he has been keeping for old times’ sake.
The newborn is safely placed in the incubator, and Renata asks Maggie to remain with their community, believing they need someone like her to keep everyone safe. Maggie seriously considers the offer.
Before they part ways, Maggie and Negan share an honest conversation. Negan asks why she didn’t kill him when she had the chance, and Maggie admits his willingness to help save the baby changed something between them. Negan returns to Dillard’s bar, while Maggie decides to stay behind — for now — but makes it clear her next mission is finding the Dama.
Meanwhile, the episode ends with a chilling tease for what’s next. The two men who had been hanging wanted posters at the beginning of the episode encounter their boss, the Dama. Surveying an empty Midtown, she declares that half the city is gone, but rather than seeing defeat, she sees opportunity. She’s already looking for new people to rebuild her empire, promising, “Our work is just beginning.”
The Walking Dead: Dead City, Sunday, 9/8c, AMC and AMC+