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 Lost and Found,” 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. Picture 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 provided 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, “If you don’t give up, you don’t have to accept it,” Daryl replies, “I lost a lot of people,” and Paz finishes the thought: “But not all hurt the same.” It’s a uncommon flash of emotional precision—transient, grounded, and deeply felt. The sort 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. Picture 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 mistaken. 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 sort 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 “keeping a low profile,” out of the blue mobilizes like a militia, swayed by Daryl’s one-liner logic: “Kill the future 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. Picture Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All |
El Alcazar’s ambush? Basic 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 “high stakes” like a rusty outdated cage that resists logic for 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 aspect quest, however when it got here time to make use of Spanish in a significant method to talk with Fede’s mother, it provided nothing. No helpful phrases, no earned rapport. So, when Fede’s mother handed over the drugs to save lots of 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. Picture Credit score: Carla Oset/AMC @2025 AMC Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Missed Payoffs
The largest letdown? Justina wasn’t rescued. In any case 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 received free 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 autos, gasoline, and second probabilities?
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| Contrabando” – THE WALKING DEAD DARYL DIXON, Pictured: Eduardo Noriega as Antonio, Hugo Arbués as Roberto. Picture 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, gentle the fuse, and let the fallout imply one thing. As we method the season finale: Which relationship—discovered or misplaced—has lingered with you the longest? And is Daryl changing into a brand new sort of chief, or only a passenger in another person’s convoy? Share your ideas within the feedback.
Lynette JonesGeneral Ranking: 5/10
