Benjamin Cavell and his writing team have been moving with a purpose through the first six hours of their limited series, but in this, the 7th episode, they finally allow the show to catch its breath. Split between competing timelines and locations up till now, “The Stand” has reached its eponymous moment, when the forces of good march against those who serve evil, and it wisely savors the moment. Paying off its deliberate character work and setting itself up as an anxious dénouement to a conflict that’s been brewing since the opening minutes of the series, “The Walk” talks the talk of a story in good hands.
READ MORE: ‘The Stand’ Episode 6 Recap: ‘The Vigil’ Lights The Fuse On An Explosive Conflict
A cold open shows Trashcan Man (Ezra Miller) in the Nevada desert, hauling up a nuclear warhead and strapping it onto a motor cart whose Geiger counter is clicking away steadily. The last episode saw Trash tasked with the collection of some major ordinance, and like Harold (Owen Teague) and Nadine’s machinations (Amber Heard) in Boulder, the work doesn’t bode well for this show’s good guys. The audience watches the latter pair leave Colorado after their bomb’s detonation, but not before Harold reminds Nadine that she’s got one hell of a suitor waiting for her out west.
She’s not the only one, though. When Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg) wakes up following her return from self-imposed exile, she claims that God has spoken and tasked her with one last message. Stu (James Marsden), Larry (Jovan Adepo), Ray (Irene Bedard), and Glen (Greg Kinnear) are to make their way to Vegas on foot with only the clothes on their backs. The four must make a stand against Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård) before he’s strong enough to take the fight to them, and while Mother Abigail can’t see the ultimate outcome, she warns them just before dying herself that one of the four will not see the end of this journey.
Most of the rest of the episode follows the quartet’s trip west (with trusty pooch Kojak in tow), with a brief interlude to catch up on Harold and Nadine’s motorcycle ride west (R.I.P. Harold), and Flagg’s rendezvous with his long-awaited bride. Compared to what’s come before, it’s a light episode plot-wise, yet the emotional and thematic stakes of what’s unfolding on-screen couldn’t be higher. Between Harold’s final moment of clarity, the quartet’s understanding of their place in the larger cosmic equation, and the payoff of relationships forged in this apocalyptic cauldron, there’s a lot to unpack in “The Walk.”
On a sort of macro level, this episode digs into the weighty question of what all of this means vis á vis God, the Devil, fate, and the human condition. Frannie (Odessa Young) asks Stu right before he leaves whether he thinks Mother Abigail really did speak for God, wondering aloud if what they are going through even matters. The quartet asks that of themselves on the road when discussing the practical realities of their quest, and it’s Glenn that provides the answer.
Like the larger story as a whole, the point isn’t the “why” but rather the “how.” Glen admits that everything they’ve experienced thus far is beyond rational explanation, from the dreams, to Flagg, to Mother Abigail’s prophecies; why it all happened matters less than their continued movement down the path that’s brought them all this far. Although this is ostensibly a story about the end of the world and the powers of good battling evil, what lies at the crux of Stephen King’s tale is much more terrestrial.
Whether humanity can get out of its own way, whether it can come together instead of tearing itself apart, that’s the real question. “The Walk” tackles this head-on by way of these conversations, and succeeds as an episode because it buttresses the discussions with several hard-earned character moments that bring the importance of this idea home. Whether it’s Larry’s emotional farewell to Joe (Gordon Cormier), Stu’s insistence that the group carries on without him after his fall, or Harold’s benediction right before suicide, these scenes carry the weight of six well-executed hours with them.
For Larry, his moment with Joe, and later when he covers Harold’s corpse, shows just how far the guy has come since his introduction in episode 2. His pain in saying goodbye to Joe when episode 3 showed him reluctant to help the boy at all, or his shedding of the leather jacket that signified his rock star status, mark a significant change for the man. This isn’t the same guy who robbed his old friend minutes after expiration just to get some pills. Demonstrating humanity’s ever-improving chances, Larry’s development shows that the greater struggle of humanity coming together and changing for the better is alive and well.
Elsewhere, Harold’s realization that it was his cowardice and not the world’s grudge against him that led to his predicament shows that even the worst of what remains on Earth has the capacity for real growth. Hell, even the loose banter between the quartet, when Ray chides the other three for assuming that, “the injun girl must know the ways of the earth,” shows that these strangers have come together and bonded in a way none of them would have thought possible prior to Captain Trips.
It goes both ways, too. As already mentioned, Harold understands in his last minutes that it was his inability to let go of his humiliation and hatred that has doomed him, and once Nadine gets to the desert, she too has an awful moment of clarity when she and Flagg bang it out. Even Mother Abigail chastises herself for the sinful pride that caused her to forget that, “I was not the potter, but the clay.” As this series creeps toward the final showdown, Cavell and his writers are making it clear that the bigger battle for humanity’s salvation is already underway, and the lines there for which side one should be on are as clear as day.
“The Walk” works as well as it does because it manages to pull these character and thematic moments together in an episode that is also captivating, and is bolstered by some gorgeous cinematography capturing the quartet’s walk west (and a clutch use of Radiohead’s “I Promise” during one such portion). The performances of Marsden, Adepo, Kinnear, and Bedard represent an emotional high-water mark for the series, with all four actors using the history of the previous six episodes to fall into an effortless rapport as a group.
On the flipside, like Harold’s motorcycle, Teague hits a wall with his performance this time around, as his magnificent crescendo in last week’s “The Vigil” didn’t leave him anywhere to go in the early moments of this episode. And while Nadine’s lightening-fast gestation of Flagg’s demon-baby does hit the whole, “the future is what you make of it” theme a little too squarely on the head, her corpse-like complexion at the end of the episode, and the leery glances of the Vegas faithful when she’s in sight, set the stage well for the scary AF world the next episode is likely to inhabit.
Blessed with the thematic, emotional, and narrative ballast to keep this episode and series balanced against all that’s come before, “The Walk” feels just as solemn and important as the story would suggest. Enjoying the character payoffs that service the heaviest moments, and bolstered by a cast that has largely found its groove, the show has earned the confrontation now at the audience’s feet. It’s a tense feeling, but as Stu reminds Larry, “I shall fear no evil.” [B+]
“The Stand” airs weekly on CBS All Access.
