Emotional Contraband
This week’s episode of The Strolling Useless, titled “Contrabando,” trafficked in smuggled hearts, buried guilt, and emotional money owed lengthy overdue. Thematically, it leaned into “Love’s Misplaced and Discovered,” with Justina locked away like forgotten cargo and Roberto hidden like a secret too fragile to call. On the episode’s conclusion, Carol isn’t Roberto’s mule. She’s the one smuggling hope out of enemy territory whereas the remainder of the city trades in silence and self-preservation.
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| “Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Eduardo Noriega as Antonio. Photograph Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC@2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Loves Discovered, Loves Misplaced, and Loves That Ought to’ve Stayed Hidden
This season’s emotional contraband—love discovered, love misplaced—was on full show. Justina and Roberto, Antonio and Carol supplied tender however tentative connections, whereas Daryl & Isabelle, Paz & Elena, Fede & Maria, and Antonio & Maria carried the heavier losses. The quiet trade between Paz and Daryl about misplaced love was one of many few moments that landed with emotional readability. When Paz says, “In the event you don’t surrender, you don’t have to simply accept it,” Daryl replies, “I misplaced lots of people,” and Paz finishes the thought: “However not all harm the identical.” It’s a uncommon flash of emotional precision—transient, grounded, and deeply felt. The form of writing the remainder of the episode might’ve used extra of.
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| “Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Alexandra Masangkay as Paz. Photograph Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
In the meantime, the Antonio–Fede–Maria triangle unraveled with all of the drama of a soggy envelope. Maria’s loss of life throughout a documentary shoot? That’s the twist? No affair, no secret paternity—simply Antonio’s cinephilia gone tragically improper. Fede’s tried revenge-by-poisoning of Roberto felt like a theatrical overreaction to a decades-old guilt journey. Roberto’s emotional spiral over the anticlimactic reveal of his mom’s loss of life was outsized and underwritten. It was the form of reality that arrives sealed, not delivered. It was one other emotional cargo left in storage.
Contraband and Contrivance
This week’s logistics leaned much less on post-apocalyptic realism and extra on narrative improv. Fede inexplicably permits Paz to depart Solaz del Mar with a conflict chest—car, gasoline, weapons, ammo. The refugee neighborhood in Barcelona, supposedly surviving by “protecting a low profile,” all of a sudden mobilizes like a militia, swayed by Daryl’s one-liner logic: “Kill the longer term king, kill la ofrenda,” as if slogans now substitute for technique.
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“Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Alexandra Masangkay as Paz. Photograph Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All |
El Alcazar’s ambush? Traditional Strolling Useless chaos, however the stakes felt manufactured. Final week, Daryl had one gun and 4 bullets. This week, he’s packing infinite ammo. He tried keys, a screwdriver, even a gun on Justina’s cage—and nonetheless, nothing. On this occasion, the showrunner has allowed pressure to trump serviceable instruments—as a result of nothing says “excessive stakes” like a rusty previous cage that resists logic for yet another beat of suspense.
Fede catches Carol and Antonio’s lies. He clocks their manipulation but nonetheless lets Carol drive out of Solaz del Mar prefer it’s a courtesy exit. Effectivity, it appears, can be contraband.
Dialogue That Emotionally Flatlines
Carol’s Spanish phrasebook subplot—meant to assist the sluggish burn of her romance with Antonio—was a misfire. The present framed her language studying as a flirtatious facet quest, however when it got here time to make use of Spanish in a significant approach to talk with Fede’s mother, it supplied nothing. No helpful phrases, no earned rapport. So, when Fede’s mother handed over the medication to avoid wasting Roberto, the second felt smuggled in from the script’s first draft—all packaging, no payload. Contraband with out consequence.
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| “Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier, Eduardo Noriega as Antonio. Photograph Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Missed Payoffs
The largest letdown? Justina wasn’t rescued. In spite of everything that buildup, the episode wanted a cathartic launch—one thing to crack open the emotional crates it’s been hauling all season. As a substitute, we obtained unfastened threads and flashbacks to Daryl’s childhood that felt extra like filler than basis.
Antonio’s public reckoning—calling out Fede for dishonest at la ofrenda, banishing Justina, and poisoning Roberto—was daring, however baffling. Why did it work? Why did Carol get away? And why is that this city so casually beneficiant with automobiles, gasoline, and second possibilities?
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| Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Eduardo Noriega as Antonio, Hugo Arbués as Roberto. Photograph Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
“Contrabando” had the bones of a compelling episode: emotional stakes, thematic resonance, and a correct ambush. However the connective tissue was flimsy. The writing wobbled, the logic leaked, and the emotional payoffs stayed sealed. Nonetheless, these quiet moments between Paz and Daryl reminded us why we’re nonetheless right here—not for the spectacle, however for the scars.
Let’s face it, the present’s been trafficking in emotional contraband all season. Now’s the time to open the final crate, mild the fuse, and let the fallout imply one thing. As we strategy the season finale: Which relationship—discovered or misplaced—has lingered with you the longest? And is Daryl changing into a brand new form of chief, or only a passenger in another person’s convoy? Share your ideas within the feedback.
Lynette JonesGeneral Score: 5/10