Princess’s past traumas haunt her as Eugene’s party finds themselves captives of the mysterious soldiers.
Abusive Parents: Princess’s stepdad was a violent, cruel bully who wouldn’t let her eat at the dinner table when her hand was infected from a splinter. What’s worse is that her own mother (who sent her back to school early before her infection was healed) agreed, ordering her daughter to not eat if she didn’t want to eat in the garage alone. Her actual father averted this from the sound of it.
Ambiguously Evil: We leave the episode not knowing the moral standing of the soldiers, but they at least kept the group alive and presumably did treat Yumiko, if she was ever in a bad condition (Princess imagined the hole through which she was talking with her early on and Yumiko is seen standing in the last shots). This also applies to the rookie soldier who certainly seems sinister at the end of the episode after seemingly making peace with Princess.
Bottle Episode: Out of the extended run of Season 10 so far, this is easily the biggest example since it almost entirely takes place inside Princess’s train car.
Bitch Slap: The soldier interrogating Princess gives her a hard slap when she pisses him off by not answering his questions.
Eugene should be all too familiar with being imprisoned with a train car after he and the rest of the group also had the same treatment at Terminus offscreen during Season 4’s "A". Even better, the soldiers also mark the cars the group are in as “A, B, and C”.
The hallucination of Ezekiel accurately says this isn’t the first time the group has dealt with new survivors promising good things only to do the exact opposite, like the Saviors.
Fire-Forged Friends: Princess lampshades this phenomenon when speaking to Hallucination!Ezekiel, who reminds her that she's only known the group for a week. Princess proclaims that a week is a "lifetime in apocalypse years".
Hallucinations: Princess suffers from them and hallucinates all of her encounters with Eugene and Ezekiel, including believing that Ezekiel is beating the soldier when it’s in fact her doing it. At the end she hallucinates some walkers as Ezekiel and two of her dressed walkers taunting her and encouraging her to abandon the group. It is also heavily implied that she imagined her discussion with a critically injured Yumiko.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Princess making a grab for a soldier’s knife leads to Yumiko trying to help her, only to get beaten severely for it.
Oddball in the Series: This is the first episode of the series to feature no deaths or walker kills. Talking Dead lampshaded this by having an “In Memoriam” segment... for the “In Memoriam” segment.
Sad Clown: Princess turns out to be an even bigger one than she initially appeared, having suffered through an abusive childhood that traumatized her for life.
Shameful Strip: Princess is forced to strip completely nude while a soldier examines her in detail. Though Princess suggests he's searching for bites, the man’s body language implies he's taking his sweet time ogling her, pushing it even further into this trope.
Toplessness from the Back: When the naked Princess is getting examined, we see her bare back as the soldier inspects her front. When he tells her to turn around, the camera zooms in and we get a Shoulders-Up Nudity shot of her as he inspects her back.
Trauma Button: Princess’s technique listing capitals is a coping technique she learned to deal with an obvious case of PTSD. The encounter with the soldiers made it come back with a vengeance.
