That final moment in “No Other Way” opens up all sorts of compelling questions for the season to come. First off: which characters opted to join The Commonwealth and which decided to rebuild their current communities? Thus far, we know that Maggie and her friend Elijah opted to stay behind and Daryl opted to head to the 50,000-member community. It’s also safe to assume that Eugene, Princess, Yumiko, and Ezekiel have decided to stay at The Commonwealth, given that they’re familiar enough with its laws already. Recall that The Commonwealth has assigned Yumiko a cushy job in law and has helped treat Ekiel’s cancer already.
Since The Walking Dead premieres all episodes one week early on AMC+, we also have a helpful teaser trailer from episode 10 already. It reveals that Carol, Magna, and Rosita have joined Daryl at The Commonwealth six months later in the timeline.
That trailer also contains a relevant bit of dialogue from Manga that sets up this arc’s main theme.
“This place is like a city from before. People who don’t fit in get cast out,” Magna, who now appears to be in the service industry, says.
This would be consistent with the way The Commonwealth arc in Robert Kirkman’s original comic series played out. In fact, if we want to know more about the flashforward and what it means for the future of the series, the comics are a solid place to look. We delved deep into that arc (which is the comic’s final batch of issues) here and here, but here’s a brief refresher.
The Commonwealth is unlike any other Walking Dead “villain”, in that it’s not really a villain at all. As led by Governor Pamela Milton, its intentions are to rebuild the world it was the way before, for better or worse. It’s successful in that mission, creating the safest, most politically stable community that we’ve seen in the post-apocalypse yet. But that safety comes along with some major concessions like an unbalanced social ladder.
